Perspectives
Do you
teach listening in your leadership schools??
Why
not??
by
Carl Youngberg
When
it comes to listening and leadership, some of us will be effective and others
will feel like they're running a cemetery: they've got a lot of people under
them and nobody's listening.
“He
just doesn’t listen. I tried to tell him
what I needed and he just cut in with what he was going to do and never heard
my needs”.
This
is a message that gets played out every day in businesses. It’s not that the business person doesn’t
care about his customer. They just don’t
know how to listen.
In
my many years as an executive with Neiman Marcus and
Bob
Conklin, who set out to teach his chemical company sales team how to improve
their selling 50 years ago and ended up developing the Adventures in Attitude
program that has now had over 5 million participants was very aware of our poor
listening skills. But he did something
about it. He included listening skills
as some of the first skills he taught.
Why
is listening so important in our business relationships? Because
we have a greater effect on people by the way we listen than by the way we
talk! Think of your last visit to your
doctor. Was your impression of the visit
based on how they listened or what they said?
Conklin
went on to note that in business today, people are most often judged by the way
they listen as we determine our impression of their intelligence, personality,
friendliness and success/outcome. The
amazing thing about good listening skills is that it can build good relationships,
make others feel important and communicate understanding. Imagine all these great business bonuses from
just our ears.
In a listening audit of your business,
- Are you unintentionally turning away new business and revenue?
- Do you have unresponsive or difficult workers?
- Are people holding up the information needed to do the job?
Simply changing some of the ways we listen will
affect your success with staff and customers. Your choices of listening style
has the power to enhance relationships, open lines of communication, improve
your credibility and convey integrity—or do just the opposite! And great leaders grow their team by modeling
the behavior they expect – so they listen.
In your business, how
many customer complaints begin with the notation that “your” employee didn’t listen
to what they needed? Surveys show that
workplace miscommunication has high costs, including lowered productivity,
increased turnover, and higher stress. Most people want to be heard but rarely
make the effort to listen to others.
What is the cost of not
listening?
-
Lawsuits and claims: One study found that poor physician/patient communication -- such as miscommunication or the patient not feeling heard by the physician -- showed up frequently in the details of malpractice suits. Another study links increased harassment claims with inappropriate workplace communication.
-
Low morale: In a time when retaining and recruiting top-notch talent is tough, alienating your employees can be very costly. Studies show that employees choosing to leave a company often include the poor interpersonal skills of a supervisor and/or coworkers among chief complaints.
-
Lost respect: A key trait of influential people is facility with listening and understanding another's perspective. Think about key religious and political figures and how they make a few seconds of time seem like valuable hours because they listen so intently. Interpersonal skills are now high on the list of the abilities that make an individual successful in the workplace.
-
Misunderstandings: These can turn a discussion into a conflict, or sour a valued relationship. Other repercussions include a high percentage of time lost to personality squabbles, according to several recent studies.
-
Reduction of fresh ideas: If people don't think their ideas are heard or accepted, they'll stop presenting them, reducing your organization's cache of knowledge and innovative ideas. Needless to say, this hurts the bottom line in today's knowledge society.
-
Poor customer service: Not listening to and understanding your customers' needs results in dissatisfied customers who gladly turn to a competitor to fulfill their next need.
Changing
listening skill “unawareness” to listening awareness
can be the secret to achieving professional success and personal satisfaction. By understanding how we can become aware of
our own “unawareness” and then learn to find and use listening skills already
available will enhance our success in our work and life, plus quick reduction
in job stress and increase in our business success.
Or
as I say in my keynote speech, “Shut Up and Start Leading, Selling and Serving” our customers, our
associates and even…..at home! Did you
hear that??
About the Author: Carl Youngberg is Vice President of Programs for Dallas ASTD and
also is a nationally known speaker and executive coach. His career stretches
from