Are you a good listener? | Issue #146
How Listening To Your People Will Power Your Business Growth
You know the importance of listening to customers. It’s a no-brainer. How else do you ensure good retention and satisfaction levels? But what about your employees? Are you good at listening to them? Do they feel heard?
In our experience, CEOs can be great at broadcasting messages and communicating initiatives. But if they’re not actively listening, how do they know if those messages are getting through? Or how their staff feel when they receive that information? Top-down communication is essential – no doubt about that. But bottom-up feedback should be a bigger priority.
Listening makes life complicated. Maybe that’s why leaders find it hard. If you have certainty over something and you value that sense of assurance, listening is not high on your list. That’s because you know it’s going to mess with your certainty. When you seek feedback on a new vision or idea, you have to be prepared for difficult questions. Your confidence is likely to be challenged and, if you’re insecure, it’s tempting not to open up the dialogue in the first place.
However, it’s a fact that staff who feel heard are happier, more productive and engaged. And you need happy, engaged employees if you’re going to have any hope of growing your business. So, make it deliberate. Focus on becoming a listening organisation.
How to Become a Self-Evolved Leader with Dave McKeown
Are you the founder or the leader of a fast-paced organisation and you’re wondering why your once high performing team are now sort of bumbling along, barely scraping by – simply not being great anymore?
Then you need Dave McKeown, founder and CEO of Outfield Leadership. Dave’s written a fantastic book – The Self Evolved Leader, and so in this episode, we discuss that and the all too common issue of Learned Helplessness.
Learned Helplessness is a situation where the founder, leader or CEO, gets the team over the line by being heroic and doing all the work themselves, or they’re the one everyone defers to because they have the technical, business or sales knowledge. They do everything themselves, they don’t bring their team up with them.
So, if you want to be a better leader, you have to become a self-evolved leader and learn to get out of your way. Because if you don’t, you’re going to stop your organisation or team from developing.
To learn some practical ways to become a more self-evolved leader, don’t miss this latest episode of The Melting Pot. We really enjoyed this conversation with Dave, we’re sure you will too.
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MEANINGFUL ACTION FOR MONDAY
Recognise that a high performing culture isn’t ‘soft’
Sometimes, when we speak to clients about high performing business cultures, they perceive them as ‘soft’ or ‘nice’. In fact, they’re anything but. If you’ve taken radical candour to heart, that can be tough on everyone. And if you’ve successfully rolled out OKRs, you have a framework for accountability that is certainly not ‘soft’. When people are dissenting, you might have to thank them. A member of the team might drop the ball, taking a misstep with a customer or employee, leading to them needing to say sorry. Again, this is hard. It’s natural to look at a cohesive, high performing team with its ready camaraderie and imagine this comes easily. But these people have come together to do good work with people they respect and have reconciled explicit expectations and vulnerability. Building psychological safety in this way takes time, effort and hard work.
Quote of the week
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said”
Peter Drucker
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.