Are You Too Busy to Listen & Not Ready To Hear?

Despite our best intentions as leaders and managers to support our staff, when we are flooded with requests, busy with management needs and overwhelmed with urgent business priorities, it is so easy to fall into a pattern of hearing but not really listening. Unfortunately, when the busy world around us doesn’t let up, it is also easy to maintain this pattern until it becomes a habit. A habit which has a detrimental impact on the satisfaction, loyalty and engagement of our people.

I wanted to share this example of a great leadership team who turned listening into a habit of hearing, despite their best intentions. I think this is a great reminder for everyone in a leadership role or position of authority to remember that they are leading by example.

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I had been engaged by a customer to help them understand the 'reasons' behind some feedback they had received in a corporate survey. The topic of interest was of a sensitive nature, and to encourage a successful deep-dive of the data, the mining manager had invited me - an outsider - to facilitate a series of discussions with their people. Having conducted some one-on-one interviews and small focus groups with various work-groups on site, it was in the report-out to leaders that Dan, a mining superintendent, asked the question.

"Why have they not told us any of this Jen!?"

"I mean, we ask them if they have any questions at the end of a pre-start, we have an 'open door policy' where anyone can come straight into any manager's office to have a conversation...". Dan was clearly exasperated and confused by the feedback.

"Interesting you ask that” I responded, “I asked the same question."

"And what did they say?" asked Mike, a technical manager.

There was no easy way to share the news with the management team, so I started gently. “If you were in their shoes, seeing the world from their perspective, how comfortable would you be in approaching your supervisor and having a conversation, or offering feedback?"

The question brought the room to silence, with the leaders looking at each other, waiting for someone to ‘break the ice’.

In the end, it wasn't the leadership team that responded to the question, but a clerk who had been invited in to take minutes of our meeting. "Can I offer an answer?", asked Lisa carefully. I looked to the team to respond. "Yes, please!" said Ian, Lisa's manager, in a slightly elevated tone.

Taking a deep breath, Lisa started, "Ok. I'm sorry if I offend anyone, I don't mean to...".

"Don't worry about offending us Lisa", interrupted Dan, "I don't think there is anything we haven't heard that could offend us".

Encouraged by Dan's comment, Lisa went on, "If you really don't know why people don't tell you things anymore... it’s because you, well… you don't listen".

"What do you mean, we don't listen?", retorted Stuart, a mining engineer who had been sitting away from the table.

"Hang on mate", said Dan to Stuart. "We agreed at the start of the session to be open to whatever the data may be. If we were doing everything 'right', we would have no need to be in this room". Looking at Lisa, Dan asked, "Thanks Lisa. Can you perhaps provide some examples of how we don't listen?"

Seeing the forlorn look on Lisa's face, I stepped in. "What Lisa has just offered, is the same answer I was given when I asked the same question to the people in the pit", I shared. "Perhaps what just happened, not a moment ago, might be one example of how listening might not be a strength of this team?", I asked. "If you were to reflect on how your leadership team meetings usually run, how much listening goes on in the room?".

It was now Ian's turn to speak up. "What just happened then is no different to what happens in our meetings and any other meetings we have with our people. Our meetings are just a 'data dump', where everyone only checks in when they have some information to impart and then checks out when they have done so. If someone was to ask a question, or offer an opinion on something that we have offered, we are often defensive or dismissive".

Ian's comment encouraged other team members to reflect, and come closer to understanding how the leadership team could "show up" differently to achieve the type of environment they wanted to create. While the team is still a work in progress, each leader came away from that conversation with an action they could take that would help them break down the barriers to both up-and-down-stream communication.

For this leadership team, listening needed to become more than just hearing the words and sounds being made and they needed to work towards ‘listening’ with more than just their ears in order to understand. They needed to listen to the responses of their employees and, see the body language and reactions of the people they were working with. They were on a journey to understand that just hearing, seeing or being around wasn’t sufficient to ensure their employees felt ‘safe’ enough to raise a concern or, supported enough to speak up.

In my opinion, listening is one of the most powerful tools we need to grow both individually and organisationally. For us to really benefit from listening, we need to be prepared to cast aside our opinions, biases and preconceptions. One way to do this is to seek to understand rather than to judge.

This article is supported by the Caterpillar Solutions Executive Series Toolbox Talk ‘Leading by Example’, available by visiting Cat.com/Safety