Lead By Listening

Listening is an act of vulnerability. To truly listen is to open ourselves to being changed.

Listening requires loosening our focus on self. To listen is to put our focus on the sender’s message. It is allowing ourselves to be influenced by what we hear. It is a blurring of boundaries between sender and receiver. Both enter into each other.

The sender we listen to may be another person. The sender may also be an aspect of ourselves. Listening requires silence. We must stop talking to hear. Periods of solitary silence allow us to hear the varied voices within us. We discover our own multiplicity. Paying attention to the various perspectives within us allows for more balanced decisions. The same is true when we listen to others. Listening to others also builds understanding and trust. When followers feel listened to, they are more apt to support the leader’s decision. Followers feel their input has been considered and perhaps even incorporated into the final decision.

Followers will trust, though, only if they experience the leader as having genuinely listened. Sincere listening means the leader is willing to be influenced by what is heard. This does not mean that the leader will necessarily change. The leader may decide to continue on the original course of action. However, the leader who genuinely listens is willing to change. This requires that the leader not identify with his or her opinions, decisions, or actions. We are quick to defend ourselves when threatened. If we believe our ideas, perspectives, behaviors represent who we are, we will feel threatened whenever someone disagrees with us. If we separate ourselves from our thoughts, feelings, and actions, we can then observe them and more objectively compare what others share with us. If we can observe it, whatever it is, we are not it.

To be a leader who listens requires courage. Listening opens us to learning. Learning takes us to our edge, the boundary separating the known from the unknown. This means living with uncertainty. Uncertainty is an obstacle to control. Control bolsters our sense of stability and security. This is why listening makes us vulnerable. It exposes us to the unknown. But the unknown is where leaders live. Leaders create that which does not yet exist. We cannot know what does not yet exist. All we can know is what is or has been. Leaders take self and followers to the edge of the known and move into the unknown.

What does it mean to lead by listening? It means to learn, to grow, to experiment; always with an ear to the messages experience sends us.