Failure to Listen = Failure to Lead pt. 3

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We live in a society where everything needs to happen immediately for us to be satisfied. We live our lives on the fast track and miss out on living life through the process. We live our lives in the fast lane in every way, including in conversations with others. We become impatient  and interrupt others while they are speaking and basically ignore them because they might be taking too long to get it out. I talk about these bad listening habits in Failure to Listen = Failure to Lead pt.1 and pt.2 in more detail. The last stage is where I hope we all can find ourselves one day.

Empathetic listening is the final stage of listening habits. Unlike egotistical, and experiential listening habits, few leaders ever find themselves at this stage. Empathetic listening is listening at the truest form and when experienced the response from the other person is noticeably different. The difference: engagement, focus, eye contact, questions, and welcoming body language. Important things to look for when in a conversation are tone, attitude and clarity.

The goal of being a listener is to understand the speaker. The best way to do so is to ask questions. More often than not, clarification is needed to grasp the content being relayed. With the practice of empathetic listening, questions instead of answers start to come to mind. Questions are asked to help the speaker reflect on the situation and the outcome. This process allows the speaker to use their own creativity to defend or reach a better desired outcome. It also helps the listener follow the thought process behind the decisions made. The leaders who learn to show understanding by the way they listen, usually start to ask good questions. As a result of listening, and asking good questions, leaders earn the right to be heard.

I have created the acronym, SPEAK to help us remember to listen.

S – Stay engaged so others know you are focused on them.

P – Position your eyes to meet theirs. This helps limit distractions.

E – Empathy. Show the other person that you care for them. You hurt when they hurt. You laugh when they laugh.

A – Ask questions and allow for intuition. (How and What questions are the most useful and  these questions help foster problem solving.)

K – Know what was said. Repeat the dialogue for clarification.

So, In order to listen as a leader we need to learn how to SPEAK.

Do not get discouraged. Leading people is not easy and failure is common it’s going to happen. Failure will occur, but it cannot be left unchecked, because fear of failure will cripple you. The leaders that become crippled by failure are the ones that over-value the outcome and under-value process. Successful people and good leaders do the opposite, they value the process and under-value the outcome because they use their failures to help them succeed in the future. What makes you a better leader is the process of getting better.

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