Every great leader should aspire to this label.
How would your employees describe you? Fair? Tough? Competent? Kind? As a leader, there’s one word in particular you should aspire to have ascribed to you: listener.
Great leaders listen well. Failure to listen has all kinds of unintended, usually undesirable consequences—for the individual, the working relationship, and the organization as a whole.
Imagine having a meeting with your boss. You want to contribute something but every time you open your mouth to speak, you’re steamrolled. You aren’t listened to. As a result, you will likely feel undervalued. Meanwhile, the other people in the meeting, including your boss, can’t benefit from your perspective and build on it. The organization then doesn’t gain from any potential positive effects of what you have to say.
A leader cannot lead well unless they get comprehensive information from the organization they are leading. That information comes first and foremost from employees. If leaders fail to listen well, they end up working with an inadequate picture of reality, because they get only some of the messages. The question then becomes: what makes a leader a great listener?
Great Leaders Listen on Three Levels
Let’s start with the obvious: being a great listener is not the same as being a great hearer. If I speak, and you hear me, it means that the words your ears picked up were processed and transmitted to your brain. It doesn’t mean you did anything with those words; it just means you heard them, the same way you might hear a car backfire or a bird chirp.
Listening to the words means you’re absorbing them and considering them in a meaningful way. For a great leader, this requires listening at three levels.
The first level is hearing. That’s the very basic moment of, I get what you’re saying. I understand it. I value you and your input. I see you, I got your message, and I will process it. In the scenario described above, the person trying to speak in the meeting isn’t even being heard. This is the first hurdle to overcome.
The second level of listening requires asking the why of what the other person is saying. You want to know the rationale behind their words. Most people do not have the ability to clearly articulate everything that’s on their mind. They just say what they’re thinking, often leaving it to the listener to figure out why what they’re thinking/saying matters.
A great listener will probe to find out why the person is saying a particular thing and ask questions to learn what’s behind it. They’ll seek to understand the relative importance—why is this thought worth verbalizing amid all the other things going on? This requires asking questions. Interestingly enough, often the person being questioned won’t have an immediate answer to those questions. They’ll have to figure out the why for themselves as they try to explain it to the listener.
The third level of listening requires asking the other person to interpret their words—that is, to share the convictions behind their message. Once you can say, I understand what you’re saying and I understand why you’re saying it, you can go on to say, Now, I’d like you to give me some insight behind your thinking. In doing so, you are asking the other person to reflect on their values and convictions, while you gain insights into those values and convictions yourself. It allows you to see where the message is coming from, so you can contextualize it.
These three levels aren’t always necessary. For example, “Here’s the money for this bread,” is a level one, and all that’s required. As listeners, we need to assess each situation to determine how “deep” to go with our listening.
The Mental Discipline of Being a Good Listener
When leaders listen on all three levels, they move beyond simple hearing. I’ve seen the difference myself. I had a great leader who was incredibly smart. I had no doubts as to his intellect. However, often when I said something to him, he didn’t seem to “get it” right away. He’d begin with a response like, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.” So, I’d try rephrasing and saying the same thing differently.
He’d press me further, still saying he didn’t understand this or that point. I’d elaborate and go into more detail. Then, he’d ask me even more questions seeking further clarification. As this went on, I started to doubt this man’s intelligence. I was spilling my guts while thinking, Why doesn’t he get it?! By the time the conversation was finished, I felt like I’d done everything humanly possible to get him to understand me.
Only then would he say, “OK, I think I understand now,” and give me a respectful, relevant, results-oriented response. He was very considered in his thinking, and his feedback was always helpful. By questioning me, he was listening to me on all three levels. He gained far more from the conversation than if he had replied immediately after my initial words. Instead, he said, “I don’t understand,” and, as a result, I went deeper.
As I worked with him, I came to recognize this pattern of listening. He often told people, “I don’t understand.” Really, he understood quite well—he “got it” the first time. But he kept the conversation going to gain more insights into the other person’s rationale. He went beyond the what of the message and sought the why of the message and where it was coming from.
That kind of listening requires great mental discipline. You have to sit back, probe gently, and let the other person empty out their thoughts on a subject before giving your input. In doing so, you’ll get more information, while also showing you value them. You must also control your ego, because when you keep saying, “I don’t understand,” people may first doubt your intelligence. It won’t be until you give your well-informed response that they’ll realize how carefully you’ve actually been listening.
When you look at the intricacies of listening well, it becomes clear why this is such an amazing skill to have—and such a rare one. If nothing else, great leaders should aspire to be great listeners.