Leadership Requires Effective Active Listening

We have posted about why Great Leaders Need to Be Effective Managers. We’ve said finding an honest, hard-working, fair individual for a leadership position is of the utmost importance. An individual lacking any of these core features cannot effectively lead your team for the long term. To the contrary, an individual without those traits is likely to create an unhealthy work environment detrimental to all involved.

There is a Leadership Checklist of qualities required to be a great leader.  Even some of the very insignificant-appearing qualities can be extremely important. We blog about them in no particular order.

Listen More and Talk Less

A great physician must be a great listener. Similarly, it is very important for a great leader to be a great listener. In fact, it’s pretty important for everyone to be a good listener. We should all listen to our coworkers, partners, employees, our patients, and our bosses. There are many important lessons to be learned. Don’t assume that you have all the answers. Listen as though the other person has the answers, even if you’re not sure they do. Even the wrong answers can help you better understand the person, give you a new idea, or help you understand why things aren’t working the way you thought they should.

Listening carefully to the people you are leading not only allows you to learn from them but also clearly communicates their importance to you. If someone understands you believe their ideas are important, they also understand you believe that they themselves are important. Once they know that, they are much more likely to buy-in to whatever solution is chosen and develop loyalty to your leadership.

Once you have listened, it is important that you clearly express your ideas and goals. You must be an effective communicator. Communication is more than simply talking. Effective communication requires hearing and understanding another person’s thoughts and concerns and also ensuring the person knows that they were heard and understood. If the ideas expressed by the team or an individual differ from the plan or will not be used, the reason it is not being used should be clearly expressed. Regardless of the utility of an idea, you should be sincerely grateful for the idea and the fact that someone shared it. It is equally important to make sure you express this gratitude.

Once you start speaking, make sure you are being understood. Make sure your words are clear. More importantly, make sure your ideas are clear. Once you have reviewed a plan with your team, discuss the plan and answer any questions to make sure everyone fully understands the goal. This is not hard but can take practice. All too often, we just want to tell people what we need them to do and get the meeting done. This approach helps you mark something off your list, but it does not yield effective leadership.

You must effectively communicate your ideas if you have any expectation of your team sharing in and fulfilling the practice’s goals. In the vast majority of cases, everyone wants the practice to succeed and will help you achieve your goals. You have to listen and communicate effectively to enable that success.

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