Corporate Education Group

2 | Listening as a Leadership Skill 300 Brickstone Square • Suite 201 • Andover, MA 01810 USA • 1.800.288.7246 • +1.978.649.8200 • info@corpedgroup.com their inability to retain information for future reference stymies efforts to meet expected levels of individual, team, and organizational excellence. This means that their conversations are largely unproductive, satisfaction and value levels decline needlessly, and they fail to consistently achieve trusting relationships with co-workers and employees. They are frustrated, unhappy and embarrassed. And that's not all. Poor listening comes with a high price tag. It accounts for business losing billions of dollars each year to missed communication, misunderstandings and duplication of effort. Why are so many people in business today unable to listen properly? How can they transform themselves as listeners? What does leadership in listening mean, and what can it achieve? Listening in the Modern World Our planet is now an almost make-believe world of instant messaging and unlimited access to information from anywhere, anytime. Our hurry- up lives have made multitasking the order of the day. And if conversational listening was a struggle before, it now poses an even greater challenge. Good listening skills are fast becoming — if they aren't already — an endangered species. Sure, we have all heard the saying, You learn more by listening than by speaking, and the oft- repeated, That's why we have two ears and one mouth. Yet most of us don't find it easy, in one-to- one and small-group interactions, to pay attention to what others are saying and to empathize with them. And even when we do, feedback and response are in short supply. How satisfying was your last customer-service call, for example? The dramatic strides we have made — and continue to make — in information-management efficiency and effectiveness suggest a promising future. But our listening practices, in comparison, are rooted in the past. We still listen according to old habits. In fact, the quality and efficiency of conversational listening have been seriously diminished. Thank the traditional, one-way lecture method of teaching, inactive listening to TV, and passive participation in front of computer screens. There are a few exceptions. A small domestic case in point: During a break in one of my listening seminars, a fellow came over to me and said, "You know, I always thought that when you listen, you just sit there. But when I think of the people I enjoy talking to — they're expressive listeners." But typically, too many managers still operate within a narrow, traditional framework that views listening's primary (or only) job to be understanding what another is saying, and the listener to be essentially a sort of "absorbing head." To get more out of listening, we need to shift our mind-set to reflect the fact that in the modern workplace, collaboration and teamwork are the preferred models of decision making, problem solving, and achieving goals. Most important, managers in the listener role need to see themselves, and have others see them, as equally empowered and empowering conversational partners who share a commitment to mutual understanding. Listening and Conversation Listening is arguably the most talked about but under-delivered business skill. The problem is that in so many instances managers' intentions to listen to others are, at best, only minimally fulfilled. Anyone who has participated in a business conversation for even a few minutes has experienced the classic reciprocity failure: the obvious lack of reaction and acknowledgment from the listener. The staff meeting is a common example: Participant comments and questions are often given short shrift by the meeting leader. The performance appraisal is another: The manager's frequent lack of skill in questioning and responding produces cagey conversation instead

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