Listening is an essential skill for any business leader. It’s how you build strong relationships, make informed decisions, collaborate effectively and maintain a strong workplace culture.
If you can learn to listen well, you’ll become a great leader, not just a good one.
This is especially so at a people-centered business like Wolff Olins – the global branding consultancy where I am CEO – where the output is the thoughts, ideas and creativity of our people.
Listening to client needs and ambitions, alongside what our own people are thinking and feeling, is critically important. Here are a few thoughts gained over the last 30 years.
By ‘listening well’, I mean listening effectively. Some call this being an active listener. But in my experience, that’s just one of three core components.
Active intention
This means having a clear-eyed and committed understanding of the objective you want to achieve by listening. Typically, this is to explore or find something out.
An important part of my role involves uncovering and exploring the potential and creativity of my team. This typically involves understanding what is motivating and what is not, what’s helping or hindering and ensuring we have a strong shared sense of purpose and direction.
Our annual internal survey is just one valuable tool I use. Every year, we ask our people for their views on where we’re heading, how we’re doing and how to best support both them and our clients better. This is not just a box ticking exercise. We give everyone the space to share what they think and how they feel to the extent they wish to.
Questions revolve around three pillars: great work (relating to how we’re feeling about the quality of our output), healthy growth (relating to how positive and rewarding people find the work they do and how it’s helping us and our clients to grow) and, finally, how much we’re enjoying the ride – which, for some, is about personal development and for others may be about the things they want to work on.
More importantly, I spend personal time with our people around the world to understand what’s uppermost in their minds. Listening in these ways is critical to understanding how best to inspire and support our people to do their best and most rewarding work.
Being present
This means focusing on what’s being said without distractions. Putting aside your phone and moving away from other screens and, if there’s an opportunity, choosing an environment for the discussion – where you know you won’t be distracted and that feels good to be in. It also means being prepared to put your own agenda, biases and current distractions to one side and fully commit to what’s in front of you and what you’re hearing.
Embrace silence
Asking questions when listening, especially open-ended questions, allows others to elaborate and demonstrates that you are with them. Leave room for – and embrace, rather than be afraid of – silence. It’s often the secret to unlocking understanding.
Resisting the urge to fill an awkward pause is a technique often used by journalists in the knowledge that it is in gaps in a conversation that the most valuable information is often shared.
Your silence is useful for other reasons too.
It can show respect – conveying your willingness to wait for someone to tell you something in their own way. It frees you up to pay attention to body language, hesitations and other non-verbal cues and it allows you to discern what’s not being said that may be important.
All business leaders should take time to consider how it feels to be fully listened to. It’s a powerful experience. And an important lesson – in both business and in life.
Sairah Ashman is global CEO of brand consultancy Wolff Olins.
