I have worked for many leaders over the years and indeed been one myself. One of the things that has struck me is how hard it is for such gifted and intelligent people, which they invariably are to hear the views of anyone other than their direct reports.
A very wise executive who ran a large computer manufacturing plant once told me that the most direct reports a manager can deal with is 9. You can obviously listen to them, but will they always give you the true position? Harvard Business School utilises case studies to teach professional firm leadership. One of them is about how General Electric under their legendary leader Jack Welch cut out the middle managers and communicated directly with the workers on the shop floor – they organised a series of meetings in their factories to do this. The results far surpassed expectation. For example, they received feedback on a new lathe they planned to buy and discovered it was not fit for purpose - so they cancelled the procurement.
Jeffrey R Immelt the CEO of General Electric from 2000 to 2017 who succeeded Jack Welch said Good leaders, good CEOs, are curious. They are absorbing information about potentially important trends and developments all the time, but they don’t instantly react to them. They contemplate them. They read about them. They listen to internal and external experts with a variety of perspectives. They engage in what I call a “soak period” before they reach a conclusion about what the input means for their company and how to act on it.
By their very nature leaders tend to be good communicators and are very capable of talking rather than listening. Here's a good Harvard Business Review article How to Really Listen to your Employees which starts Let’s face it: strong leaders tend to be characterized by their strong opinions, decisive action, and take-no-prisoners attitude. These are important traits, but it’s equally important for managers to stand down and listen up. Yet many leaders struggle to do this, in part because they’ve become more accustomed to speaking than listening.
It also suggests the idea of a “listening stick” – if you are holding it you must listen. Max de Pree the American businessman and writer cited an example of this. "In some South Pacific cultures, a speaker holds a conch shell as a symbol of temporary position of authority. Leaders must understand who holds the conch—that is, who should be listened to and when."Might be interesting to try this in many marriages!
I think it is about finding ways to break through the management veil and hear what is being said outside of the boardroom – which does mean going out and meeting the more common folk through round table discussions or by some other means. Here is a Forbes article Six Ways To Listen To Your Employees
including Town Hall meetings which suggests If you can get your team together physically or virtually, do it! Schedule a Town Hall Meeting where your topmost leader can address the team and answer questions. This is not a presentation, but a general talk about the state of the organization, the culture, the energy, the goals and the mission.
Even the Chinese leaderMao Tse-tung who as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976 was a very authoritative leader recognised the value of listening. "We should never pretend to know what we don't know, we should not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below, and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lowest levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders."
As Woodrow Wilson said "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people."
A very wise executive who ran a large computer manufacturing plant once told me that the most direct reports a manager can deal with is 9. You can obviously listen to them, but will they always give you the true position? Harvard Business School utilises case studies to teach professional firm leadership. One of them is about how General Electric under their legendary leader Jack Welch cut out the middle managers and communicated directly with the workers on the shop floor – they organised a series of meetings in their factories to do this. The results far surpassed expectation. For example, they received feedback on a new lathe they planned to buy and discovered it was not fit for purpose - so they cancelled the procurement.
Jeffrey R Immelt the CEO of General Electric from 2000 to 2017 who succeeded Jack Welch said Good leaders, good CEOs, are curious. They are absorbing information about potentially important trends and developments all the time, but they don’t instantly react to them. They contemplate them. They read about them. They listen to internal and external experts with a variety of perspectives. They engage in what I call a “soak period” before they reach a conclusion about what the input means for their company and how to act on it.
By their very nature leaders tend to be good communicators and are very capable of talking rather than listening. Here's a good Harvard Business Review article How to Really Listen to your Employees which starts Let’s face it: strong leaders tend to be characterized by their strong opinions, decisive action, and take-no-prisoners attitude. These are important traits, but it’s equally important for managers to stand down and listen up. Yet many leaders struggle to do this, in part because they’ve become more accustomed to speaking than listening.
It also suggests the idea of a “listening stick” – if you are holding it you must listen. Max de Pree the American businessman and writer cited an example of this. "In some South Pacific cultures, a speaker holds a conch shell as a symbol of temporary position of authority. Leaders must understand who holds the conch—that is, who should be listened to and when."Might be interesting to try this in many marriages!
I think it is about finding ways to break through the management veil and hear what is being said outside of the boardroom – which does mean going out and meeting the more common folk through round table discussions or by some other means. Here is a Forbes article Six Ways To Listen To Your Employees
including Town Hall meetings which suggests If you can get your team together physically or virtually, do it! Schedule a Town Hall Meeting where your topmost leader can address the team and answer questions. This is not a presentation, but a general talk about the state of the organization, the culture, the energy, the goals and the mission.
Even the Chinese leaderMao Tse-tung who as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976 was a very authoritative leader recognised the value of listening. "We should never pretend to know what we don't know, we should not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below, and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lowest levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders."
As Woodrow Wilson said "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people."
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