True Leadership Listens... with Intent

All leaders understand the power of listening. Unless you lead with an iron fist, nothing beats listening to your team. However, there is a major difference between listening, active listening, and listening with intent.

1. What is your intention?
2. What outcome do you desire?
3. Why is listening so vital to leaders?

The simplistic version is Listening shows you care about the other person. Fine. What filters do you have while you are listening?

For most people, current circumstances, past agendas, and power plays all factor into our listening filters.

For example: Let's assume your politics are right-leaning. When you listen to your left-leaning Grandma, the dialogue in your mind has filtered out her experience. As you listen, your thoughts are already filtered with your agenda. Your mind is already in debate mode.

"But Grandma, Roosevelt made these glaring mistakes..."

Change happens when you sit back and listen. This has been drilled into most professional sales people and leaders. But listening without a filter or agenda is not easy. In fact, it's nearly impossible.

We all have decades of experience, programming, values, and interests the other party doesn't. Unless you are Mr. Spock and can be 100% clinical, even an eyebrow raise speaks volumes when listening.

How do you remove decades of your values, ideas, and interests when you are listening to someone else? The “issues” your employees bring up shouldn’t be an annoyance. There’s value in going through your company’s Glassdoor profile to see how your employees truly feel. 

It’s invaluable feedback.

Listen, evaluate, and before you respond, repeat what they are saying.

Then, sincerely put yourself in their shoes and try to see things not only from their viewpoint, but put the cloak of their heritage, income, experience, etc. as you listen.

Listen not simply with "heart" but with a blank slate in your ideas, culture, and values.

Maybe there are simple changes you can make that change the trajectory of your company’s growth. Your goal is to be open to any feedback that helps you understand your organization in a deeper way,

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you don’t need to do more to build up your team. Give them the tools they need to grow. Invest in their growth and watch your bottom line continue to increase.

Employees have options these days, and there is no dollar value you can put on a great employee. If you’re going to experience explosive growth, you’re going to need a team filled with great employees to get there.