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Active listening and the nature of leadership

The first step on your way to becoming a great leader in any industry is to become a great listener. You need to practice active listening. Don’t listen to respond, or to argue, or just to forget the next day. Listen to understand.

Active listening specifically refers to listening attentively to the speaker, making a deliberate effort to understand their perspective, and retaining what they’ve said. In other words, it means to understand the other person’s point without the intent of responding with your own perspective. This skill is a must-have in any leader’s toolbox.

This is something you need to perform well as a leader. An effective leader works to meet their people’s needs, helps them achieve their performance goals as individuals and provides them with the guidance that they need to be the best contributor they can for their team and company. All of that requires a lot of active listening. Outcomes are never guaranteed, but you can always control the actions you take in an effort to make the best outcomes more likely.

How and why to apply active listening

Now that we’ve established the importance of active listening, let’s go through how you can apply it. The best way to go about active listening is to think of it as much more than just the act of receiving information. It’s a series of actions that you take while someone is speaking to you in order to understand and retain everything they are saying to you. Here are the five basic steps provided by Michigan State University that you can use to correctly apply active listening with anyone:

1. Pay attention
   Pay close attention to the speaker and what they are conveying to you. Don’t let yourself be distracted with other work tasks, your electronics, another conversation, or anything else that might divide your attention away from the speaker. Your goal here is to gain their perspective, and nothing more.
2. Use non-verbal cues
   Use your body language or cues to show that you are invested in what the speaker is saying. Simple head nods, expressions, and appropriate eye contact will let the speakers know that you are listening to them with an intent to understand.

3. Gain clarity
   Respond to the speaker by paraphrasing their points to show that you understand. If there is some confusion on your end, ask them a question to get clarification on what exactly they mean. By showing your understanding and asking questions when you are confused, you show the speaker that you are listening in good faith and truly trying to take in what they’re saying.
4. Avoid judgment
   Allow the speaker to fully express their idea(s) before jumping in with a contribution. Don’t interrupt them with a hasty judgment, and don’t respond until they are fully done with the idea that they are expressing. Interruptions or quick judgments can and often do lead to continued misunderstanding, frustration, and an inability to continue the conversation productively.
5. Respond appropriately
   Having taken in everything the speaker has said to you, respond with candor in a way that shows that you’ve understood their point of view to the best of your ability, and with dignity so that you can honor and respect them as a person.
   

You can use the principles of active listening to anything you do in your role that involves other people. You can apply it within your team to get a better understanding of what they need from you and provide clear guidance and solutions on tasks, projects, or concerns. You can actively listen to your peers, those leading other teams, to understand what they need from your team and how you can create wider efficiencies. When you actively listen to your own leaders, you can gather a lot of value and lessons from any conversation with them, which you can then turn around and apply amongst your team and peers.

When you put it into practice, you will see that active listening is more than just a “soft skill,” it’s a superpower. It has a ton of tangible benefits, including, but not limited to: • An increase in psychological safety, one of the most important things you can have in your workplace

• A superior ability to guide others in the right direction as a coach or a leader • An increased ability to facilitate understanding between people and teams

The bottom line

In leadership roles, listening is a massive part of your job. You need to listen to your team to understand what they need to succeed, listen to your peers to know what they need from you and your team, and listen to your own leaders to understand what exactly you need to do to forward the bottom line. By going into each of these conversations applying the principles of active listening, you can get a lot more value from engaging in it and create more positive outcomes for your organization and those within it.