How can you actively listen to understand the needs of your direct reports?

Listening and responding are essential, especially for servant leaders. When you listen actively, you understand the perspective of the other person. Comprehending the other person is critical for creating a thoughtful and empathic response. Deliberate and compassionate responses are possible when active listening is present. Bottom line: 1. Listen actively with care. 2. Respond deliberately and empathically. Two moves, one outcome: Humanity in action to serve as a leader. How do you listen actively? What's your secret sauce? Drop a comment. We'd love to hear your unique thoughts.

Active listening is vital for understanding and supporting your direct reports. Key steps: Give Full Attention & Eliminate distractions. Use Non-Verbal Cues: Nod, maintain eye contact, convey openness. Paraphrase and Confirm: Repeat and seek confirmation to ensure understanding. Ask Clarifying Questions: Encourage specifics to gain deeper insights. Avoid Interrupting: Let them express fully before responding. Empathize: Acknowledge their feelings, show understanding. Express Support: Communicate your commitment to helping and supporting them. Follow-Up: Check in later to demonstrate ongoing interest and support. By mastering active listening with direct reports, you enhance trust, & strengthen your leadership.

Active listening feeds critical thinking and removing team frictions. Your people are telling you what slows them down. Whether it's processes, tools, or motivations - when we dive into active listening, we get their messages. Sometimes we hear the message during team meetings, other times it's during 1-on-1s, occasionally it's during social events. In every case, having our listening tuned and curious helps us find this knowledge.

It's not a game, not a strategy or tactic. Realise that as a leader, you are there to give guidance, and to do that, you need to understand the person you are guiding. It is your responsibility to support your coworkers to your best ability. Act like it!

Try working for a hotline (suicide or something else that requires you to be a human that just listen) to get the listening skills and practice them :)

Be curious. Really, that's the core of "how" for active listening. Be curious. Your team is constantly throwing signals for what works, what fails, what they want. It's your job as servant leader to catch those signals and use curiosity to find the underlying details. You need the details to take action and ultimately improve your team's performance.

Ask open ended questions, try to really understand their passions, their problems, their motivations. Most people really love to contribute, give them the guidance they need and then support them on their path.

Listen for their motivation and drive. Maybe they don't deserve to be on your team. You take good care of your team. They perform well, are consistently improving, and your churn is dropping. That's a high performing group - being included is a privilege. If someone isn't willing to play up to the standards of your team you can coach them, improve their skills, and maybe adjust their responsibilities. But they can't be dragging down everyone else. Maybe your team just isn't where they belong. Active listening let's us find that place of understanding if someone belongs on our team. It's ok if they are better suited to another team and it's your responsibility to help them find that happy place. Listen for the fit.

It is also important to ask Open-Ended Questions to encourage discussion by asking questions that prompt detailed responses and show your genuine interest.

They are not working for you. You are working for them. Your job is to make your coworkers successful, to enable them and to guide them in their growth.

Active listening is a tool. You need multiple tools on your belt - active listening is great for data gathering and helps create psychological safety - but it's not the whole tool belt. You also need distress tolerance, critical thinking, persuasion, external research, and data analysis skills (to name a few). Servant leaders have broad skills.