Listening And Learning In Leadership

Welcome to Monday and another week.

Last week, we discussed the importance of leading yourself.

Read it here if you haven’t.

We discussed the importance of learning to lead yourself by discovering who you are. It’s essential to understand your own identity before trying to lead others. Additionally, we briefly touched on how to lead yourself and mentioned the concept of emotional intelligence.

Today, we will continue by discussing the importance of listening and learning.

What Is Listening In Leadership?

The people you lead want to be heard, express themselves, contribute, complain, and be part of what’s going on. They are not robots or servants. They are human beings who have unique characteristics, opinions, and perspectives, and giving them a chance to speak and be listened to makes them feel involved.

Naturally, we all loved to be heard. It’s normal. We feel unimportant when we find ourselves in situations where we can’t express ourselves.

In leadership, there are no useless opinions or contributions.

Leaders must learn to listen to everybody, acknowledging the value of each individual’s perspective. Even the people you think don’t have anything to say—listen to them. Their insights can be invaluable.

Listen to the good, the bad and the ugly. You don’t need to absolutely do what they say; just listen to them and use the information you get to design your strategy. Every type of feedback is a learning opportunity.

The information we get from those we lead is like manure. We use them to build ideas and strategies.

Great leaders are big on listening. They listen more than they talk, setting an example for others to follow. As a leader, you have the power to shape a culture of listening.

A leader who talks too much and doesn’t listen has much to learn in the school of leadership.

The Importance Of Listening

“Hardly any behaviour hurts followers more than a leader who does not know how to listen.”

When leaders don’t listen to the people they lead, the people become uninspired and discouraged and think they are not useful or important.

We chase people away when we don’t listen to them.

Followers want to be heard. They want to be involved.

If you remember how I defined leadership. I said leadership is a relationship between the leader, the follower and the vision. In this relationship, every party grows, and one way each party can grow effectively is by sharing ideas. What better way to share ideas than to listen to ourselves?

Most leaders love to talk and listen to themselves. You don’t have to do all the talking because you are the expert. Leaders shouldn’t talk too much. If you talk too much and don’t listen your talking will be diluted by your lack of listening.

The Attention Span Problem

The problem of poor listening has worsened over the years. And the introduction of digital technology has made things worse. It’s difficult for people to sit down and read a 365-page book, and to help their poor attention span, we create audiobooks. To pamper them more, we create 15-minute audiobooks. Hilarious.

Technology has shortened our attention spans, making listening more difficult for leaders and followers.

Leaders must be deliberate about developing their listening skills. If you’ve observed that you find it difficult to listen to the people who look up to you, you must sit down and work on your listening skills. Here are some practical tips: practice active listening, ask open-ended questions, and show empathy. These strategies can help you become a better listener and a more effective leader.

We Learn More Through Listening

Successful, great leaders understand the importance of listening to those they lead, especially those below. Those whose voices are not always heard.

The greatest power of the leader is the information they have about their organisation, and the most valuable information comes from within than without, and the great ones know how to harvest the information coming from inside. They simply listen to everybody and everything.

We Show We Care When We Listen

Listening is a superpower.

Most of your leadership problems have been solved if you have it as a leader.

I learnt the art of listening early in my leadership journey. Naturally, I know how to listen. Well, maybe because of my kind of person. We seldom talk. And I discovered that it has helped me a lot in leadership.

I take time to listen to everybody I lead. It doesn’t matter how small or even how big they are. I listen to them as if they were giving me a lecture.

In listening, I have gained insight into their challenges, understood their unique perspectives and why they act the way they do.

By listening to people, you won’t jump to conclusions when people behave strangely.

Most people are going through a lot. They have personal challenges that will influence the way they act, and if you don’t know them as a leader, you might think they are just “nuts.” But by being genuinely interested in listening to people, you’ll be surprised to discover details about their lives that will help them, you, and the organisation in general.

Listening Is Hardwork

Listening is a hard chore in a world where being in front and talking is celebrated. Talking is easier than listening.

Talking is celebrated, it’s famous, and many of us love to talk. Yes, we do. On social media, we type/talk more than we listen/read.

Listening requires focus, empathy, and self-restraint. It demands that we set aside our own urge to be heard to engage with someone else’s perspective.

Listening is not just hearing! It’s being involved and absorbed, soaking up everything the person or people have to say. It’s about understanding their perspective, acknowledging their feelings, and responding thoughtfully. This is the essence of active listening, and it’s a crucial skill for any leader.  

A Big Lesson In Business

Listen to your customers/users.

Great products almost perfectly mirror the needs of the customer/user because they are actively listening to them.

Apply the same principle to your business or company as a leader or entrepreneur.

Listen to those whom you give services or products to. They are the users and are the ones you’re serving.

This is one of the biggest and most important lessons in product development.

The customer is king, and great, successful global companies like Amazon and Apple have proven this principle true. These guys take the user experience seriously. They don’t joke with it because they understand that power is in the hands of the user.

You should think the same way.

Listen to those you lead.

Why Is It Hard For Busy Leaders To Listen?

“History is the story of leaders, good and bad, who have done amazing good and terrible evil.”

Finally, to conclude, we will briefly list why busy leaders find listening difficult.

The bigger you get as a leader, the more difficult it is to follow certain leadership principles.

If you lead five people, listening to them is easier. But listening to everyone becomes almost impossible if you’re leading a hundred or more.

Here are the reasons why busy leaders find it difficult to listen.

Too Little Time.

Too Many People.

Too Much Pressure.

Too Big A Distance.

Too Much Knowledge.

In the next article, we will explore the importance of learning. Listening and learning are closely tied together. To learn, we need to be able to listen.

At the end of the listen and learn section, we will discuss how we can listen effectively and practical ways to inculcate the learning habit into our lives as leaders.

On Mondays, I write about leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship. We normally publish in the morning, but sometimes, we send it out later in the day.

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Stay inspired, informed and intelligent.

The future belongs to you and all the inspiration you need to do and become more lives here!

See you next week.