How, being a bad listener, is impairing your capabilities!

A friend was visiting my office a few days back and happened to drop by. We were catching up over coffee and sharing what each one of us had been doing these past few days. Gradually, the discussion meandered towards the pressures each one us were facing in our current roles, some good, some harrowing. Suddenly, this friend said, "He just doesn't listen". And then a long discussion on how his new boss, who is considered a #go-getter, was pressing his requirements on the team without understanding the bottlenecks or even lending ear to the concerns being raised by his subordinates. 

Don't we all find ourselves in situations like this at one or the other time during the course of our careers? 

Leave the bosses, let’s look at ourselves. We talk to colleagues, friends, family and total strangers and how do we behave. We talk, talk some more and talk even more. We are almost enamoured with the art of talking. Some enjoy this art more than others. When it comes to the rare chance of having to listen, like actual active listening involving #non-verbal cues of exhibiting facial expressions matching with what is being said, most of us tend to display a stupendous indisposition towards this trait. Let’s accept, we live in a world, where we are constantly required, almost hammered to make ourselves appear intelligent and sound aware of everything on every subject.

And so, we choose to speak and to listen only with the intent of speaking again. When we project this fa?ade of actively listening to someone and that of doing so intently, we often limit the conversation to a match of one-upmanship by using our silence to prepare a reply in our heads and a brisk one at that so that there is no possibility of a brief silence, awkward or otherwise. This is where we go wrong, because in doing this, we end up obscuring the essence of what the other person is saying by disallowing ourselves from engaging with the dialog constructively and from absorbing the issue at the heart of the problem at hand. This limits us in developing a proper outlook towards situations.

A leader or a potential leader cannot afford to obscure dialogue. He has to master the art of listening, for if he doesn’t, he will give way to one dimensional communication and sooner than not, people under him will deem it fit to keep quiet rather than voice opinions or dissents. They say, "One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say." So, a successful leader has to start listening to the voices around him before everyone around choose to go quiet.

When we run a small business, we keep our eyes and ears open to the challenges and opportunities environment throws at us and proceed with utmost caution. Slowly, the business grows and becomes bigger and as we continue to see success through our preferred style of management, a sort of hubris sets and anyone who tries to voice caution or appears to question the established strategy in the light of changing #competitive landscape or changed #macro-economics starts to appear adverse and unwarranted.

And when we look at major like Kodak, Motorola and Blackberry, we see that they sunk to the bottom of the sea primarily due to the incapacity of their #CXOs to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the insiders, who raised eyebrows at their static strategies and one-dimensional style of planning that veiled the evolving expectations of customers and shrouded the validity of their smaller competitors who were gaining relevance at exponential rates due to their heightened focus on disrupting the then prevailing product mix with their out of box offerings, quickly catching the customer’s fancy and making great inroads into the mobile handset industry. Think Samsung, iPhone.

So, let’s keep an open mind and come around to the art of listening for that will equip you to make better and more informed decisions. When you show your peers and subordinates the capability of being a good listener, you will be happily surprised to see the positive changes in attitudes of the people around you, people who will feel #engaged into the idea of efficiency and performance, those who will be #empowered to make better decisions and of course the one’s who’ll be #excited to take on the future.

 What do you think?? Pour in..