Listening Skills Are Key to Leadership

Listening skills are important in management and in developing leadership skills because managers and administrators must rely on information as it is relayed from their staff, co-workers and colleagues. One research study frames the importance of listening skills in this way: "The average individual spends from 42 to 60 percent of daily communication time listening...Yet most people are inefficient listeners; they forget, ignore, or misunderstand up to 75 percent of what they hear..." (Lynott, 1998, para.5). That is a large percentage of information that is either forgotten or generally unheeded. In today's business climate where the sheer multitude of media and information sources has caused management's ability to focus on one topic to become fractured, refining one's listening skills can assist greatly in processing the knowledge that's being relayed in casual conversation, telephone conversation, boardroom meetings or back office tête-à-têtes.

Both anecdotal and scholarly research has shown that developing well-honed listing skills is extremely important in team building, team management and ultimately, in team mission success (Grosse, 2002, para.36). Grosse points out that teams who listened "to each other patiently and attentively helped to overcome some communication problems..."(2002, para.36). This is a key point, that listening skills help to overcome other communication problems. That's a valuable attribute in a business climate that often has teams and employees placed remotely from the leadership they answer to. In developing improved listening skills leadership must learn to listen for more than the content of words or the mere diction of the utterance, for, as Lynott makes clear, leadership skills must also: "learn to listen for both content and the "feelings" of messages and to incorporate active listening skills such as attending behaviors, paraphrasing, and using questions..." (1998, para.8). Although feelings are not something today's hard-driving business executives may want to heed or acknowledge, most research on the workplace stipulates that this is the very thing that should be heeded because emotions are often what employees are trying to convey. Also, by asking questions about what's being said, leadership, or those trying to move into leadership, are tacitly acknowledging that not only have they heard what's been said, but even more so, they are interested in what was said. This type of leadership is very different from the command and control of previous management styles based on the military model of authoritarian delegation of responsibility.

Given the importance of developing leadership skills it is incumbent upon leadership or people seeking such responsibility to seek training in this regard or to develop better listening skills organically. One method recently developed to help promote listening effectiveness is a type of self-imposed period of silence on the part of the person developing his or her listening skills (Johnson, Pearce, Tuten, & Sinclair, 2003). These authors found that although a period of self-imposed silence did not quantitatively produce verifiable results on improved listening skills, the qualitative evidence produced was overwhelming. The participants themselves observed an improvement in overall listening efficiency: "qualitative data from journals kept by the participants suggest that the act of self-imposed silence greatly improves awareness of one's listening effectiveness and the value of developing beneficial listening skills" (Johnson, Pearce, Tuten, & Sinclair, 2003, para.1). Clearly, after concentrating on the importance of listening skills these study participants noticed a pronounced improvement in communication.

With more research being completed by scholars in many professions, including business, the importance of listening skills as they equate to leadership and leadership skills cannot be understated: "The ability to listen effectively is increasingly recognized as a critical skill among managers and leaders..."(Johnson, Pearce, Tuten, & Sinclair, 2003, para.3). Any leader or individual aspiring to that role could benefit from improved listening skills and listening efficiency.

References

Grosse, C. U. (2002). Managing Communication within Virtual Intercultural Teams. Business Communication Quarterly, 65(4), 22+.

Johnson, I. W., Pearce, C. G., Tuten, T. L., & Sinclair, L. (2003). Self-Imposed Silence and Perceived Listening Effectiveness. Business Communication Quarterly, 66(2), 23+.

Lynott, P. A. (1998). Teaching Business Communication in an Accelerated Program. Business Communication Quarterly, 61(2), 20+.