Raising a teenager can be hard some days. When my son was 15, we went through a rocky time and in one of our more intense conversations he told me point blank that I wasn’t listening. That statement struck a chord with me because I (arrogantly) thought I was doing a great job of listening. Yet, when I was honest with myself, I realized he was right. I was hearing him talk and at the same time, thinking about what I was going to say next, all in an effort to convince him that I was right and he needed to do things my way. I was well intended but that didn’t matter because my behavior was what counted. The lack of listening was having a detrimental impact on our relationship.

 

I was humbled.

 

I started paying more attention to how well I was listening. I became calmer, and more curious. I truly wanted to understand my son. More importantly, I wanted him to feel understood and respected, not because I said he was but because I was showing it, through listening.

 

I started listening better and things between us got a lot better.

 

When it comes to listening, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that there are many forces during the day that get in the way of listening. However, the good news is that listening is a skill that can be developed. It’s not something we’re just born with or not. It can be cultivated daily and when that happens, a leader’s impact will be more positive and far-reaching.

 

One of the first things a leader can do to improve their listening skills is to recognize what is preventing effective listening in the first place. Here are a few observations we have:

 

• They suffer from the “superiority illusion” of believing they are better at something than they really are. We can recount many conversations where leaders genuinely thought they did a good job of listening in each discussion however once we together dug a little deeper, they came to their own conclusions that they were missing the mark.
• Leaders have been successful because they get things done and fix issues. This creates a drive to get results, and while this is a positive attribute, a failure to harness this drive causes leaders to rush through discussions and impose their own theories and solutions, without listening to others.
• Our minds naturally wander. In fact, they wander about 47% of the time. Instead of listening to what the other person is saying, we start thinking about what to cook for dinner.
• Technology creates distraction and hijacks a leader’s attention.
• Strong emotions, such as frustration, take over.
• A leader believes the myth that listening takes more time and it’s time they don’t have.

 

Do you relate?

 

If so, and you’d like to up level your listening skills, here are a few actions you can take right away.

 

1. Ask trusted colleagues, team members and even those outside of work, what they think you can do to be a better listener. People want to help each other. If you have a blind spot in this area, others can help you find it.

2. Manage your surroundings, especially technology. Remove or reduce distractions. Adjust device notifications, even if it means putting it out of reach.

3. When you are in discussion, slow down and be present. When your mind wanders, bring it back and tune in again. Actively and intentionally cultivating attention can be a challenge but can be done with practice.

4. Challenge your belief that listening takes time. It often doesn’t take more time but saves time because good listening improves the quality of a discussion significantly. One leader we worked with said, “I had one good 15 minute discussion where we got to the heart of the issue and that was so much better than three 10-minute discussions where we didn’t resolve anything.”

5. Commit to paraphrasing more often. We can’t paraphrase if we haven’t listened and when we paraphrase, it not only confirms whether we got it right, it helps the other person to feel respected and understood.

6. Keep practicing and be kind to yourself when the result is less than you would like it to be. Don’t expect perfection. Stick with it and aim for progress. Make it better than it was yesterday.

 

Listening is an underrated leadership skill, the benefits of which silently float around ready for the taking. Becoming aware of what’s getting in your way now, and deciding to improve, are the first steps to reaping those rewards. The people around you will appreciate you for it and perhaps equally as important, you will too.