The beauty of listening...

In my 20+ years in local government, one of the most overlooked attributes of leadership is the ability to listen carefully and consistently. Leaders who do this wield it like a superpower. They build great teams who model this behavior, and it builds trust and good problem solving.

Despite this age of smart phones, social media, and blogs that purport to be media, it’s increasingly difficult to hear each other.

I won’t bore you with a lot of pedantic references to “the good old days” when we didn’t have all of these electronic interruptions. And it’s also worth noting that, despite protestations to the contrary, we have not (will not?) find a way to utilize those devices to listen and hear each other more effectively. Who really believes that the quality of our communications has improved in the last ten years?

Listening and hearing are important in equal measure for those in leadership. It’s hard to do—it requires the speaker to stop talking and stop thinking when others are talking. Watch someone who is really listening. They make eye contact, their body language is to lean in physically, sometimes tilt their head, and frequently nod in agreement. Not listening involves looking up (a “tell” that someone is formulating a response or comment); at its worst, it involves looking at your smartphone, or talking to your neighbor.

It’s likely that, because you are a human being, you instinctively understand this. So why aren’t we practicing this more often? And, what if we did practice good listening more intentionally?

In the end, it’s a bit like staring at an image that’s being projected on a screen that’s totally out of focus. It’s not understandable. But if you turn the dial, you can sharpen the focus, and suddenly you can see clearly what you’re looking at on the screen.

We’re spending a lot of time right now not listening, and as a result, not hearing. Why deprive ourselves of the ability to hear each other clearly? How much richer would the conversation be if we listened more than we talked?

Rantasaurous out.