Great leaders don’t just speak — they listen

There is a common saying that at family gatherings you should avoid two topics – religion and politics. That’s nonsense. How are we as a society going to progress if we can’t tackle important issues together around the dinner table? This may be an existential question, but this mindset often permeates within organizations, too. 

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." – Winston Churchill

Listening is a skill that is under-appreciated today. Great leaders are great listeners. And we should all strive to be great listeners in both our personal and professional lives. When we fail to listen, we fail those around us. When we fail to listen to our employees they leave us for something better. When we fail to listen to our customers, someone else does and then provides a better product or service. Listening is a fundamental ingredient for success.

Here at Valley, we make listening a core part of our organization. For instance, over the last couple of years, we’ve instituted a company-wide engagement survey, giving our associates the opportunity to tell us how they feel. We recently completed our 2020 survey and saw a more than 80% response rate, with thousands of comments letting us know everything we’re doing well and everything we could be doing better.

I’m not here to tout how proud I am of that response rate. I’m here to tell everyone – those who work at Valley and those who don’t – that I’m listening. Our leadership team is listening. Our management teams are listening. And next, we’re taking action. We’re creating action plans. We’re engaging in more conversations. And we’re taking steps to be a better Valley for tomorrow.

We’re also out there listening to our customers. In just the past year, we’ve built a Customer Research team that meets with both consumer and business customers to understand their pain points and needs. Our sales associates are out there day and night listening to what our customers need to get through many of the challenges they face today brought on by the pandemic and economic uncertainty. We want to build a more innovative company, but innovation needs to solve a problem or a meet a need – and the only way we can do that is by listening.

I’m also sharing this note today because during this election cycle it’s been evident that our political discourse is so heated and so divided that you can see first-hand what happens when people fail to listen to each other. Whether it’s about the pandemic or protests in our cities, we need to stop reverting back to our echo chambers and start listening to each other again; start having those conversations around the dinner table again.

I say this not just as a business leader, but as a father; a coach; a husband. We all share the same land, live in the same communities, share similar dinner tables. It’s time we stop being afraid to listen. For whether you’re running a business of 5 or 5,000, or leading a country of 350 million, we can only succeed when we set aside our differences, set aside our presumptions, and simply listen and talk.