So, How is Listening the Gateway to Superior Leadership?

PART III

From the previous article, you may now realize that your leadership is sending some messages that need fixing. So, how can you improve your leadership? The solution is to go out and LISTEN, listen to complaints about your support, messages of low standards. Then correct that condition and do it to the receiver’s satisfaction. This corrects the problem thereby making the worker’s job easier, corrects your poor leadership from misleading others and provides living proof that you really care about your people. In addition, this process of detection and correction teaches workers how to solve problems, how to treat customers and how to use value standards in the workplace. One stone can kill more than one bird.

Luckily for you, these workers don’t use the value standards they got from you to judge what goes on around them. What they use are their own value standards and all of their values are good, for instance everyone believes in honesty. Since each worker has different standards compared to the next worker, each will be bothered more by one thing, and less by another. Taken collectively, they disclose most of the problems, if not all problems. And by the way, if most of them line up against one particular thing, rest assured that thing requires major fixing.

So, get out with your people, listen to their complaints and suggestions, and take corrective action. Corrective action may be just an explanation of certain details unknown by the worker. Whatever it is, corrective action must be timely, of unquestionably high quality and must include getting back to the originator to find out if your intended fix is acceptable (don’t put the fix into action before getting feedback). As I mentioned in the previous article on Leadership through Support, this is your leadership and you want it to reflect only the highest standards for every value. The values of significance are: honesty, industriousness, confidence, positive attitude, compassion, humility, admission of error, perseverance, fairness, forgiveness, forthrightness, trust, courtesy, grit, heroism, knowledge, integrity, quality, loyalty and selflessness.

Listening itself must be conducted in such a way as to reflect high standards of the above values. Your tone of voice and attitude are crucial. You must make clear that you know you are making the worker’s job more difficult than it should be, albeit without intending to do so, but that you are willing to make needed corrections. Let them know you are the supplier of support and they are your customers. Act like it, body language, facial expressions, smiles, etc! The customer is always right so, act that way and say it several times. In addition, you may have to ask questions to flesh out the problem or to get the worker to talk. Suffice it to say that bosses are scary people in general and you need to gain the worker’s trust before they can really open up. Making clear that you are their servant as concerns support issues is a big step in the right direction.

After you start hacking away at the forest of your bad or low quality leadership, workforce performance will improve almost in lockstep. Don’t be surprised, just keep at it. It makes no difference if you are a lower or higher level boss, the effect on the people for whom you are responsible is the same.

Listening has a large number of associated positive effects as well as opportunities for superior leadership not mentioned herein. The only additional effect I will discuss is commitment.

Please stay tuned to tomorrow's article on Gaining Subordinate Commitment.

Leadership through Support

PART II

We all know that every boss is responsible for providing support to the workforce. Support generally includes such elements as training, discipline, rewards, tools, parts and materials, technical advice, guidance and direction, planning information, documentation, procedures, rules and, last but not least, peace of mind.

Each element of support projects certain value standards. For example, tools can be of high, medium or low quality. They can be clean or dirty, easily available or hard to get, of the latest technology or the oldest, always or rarely there when needed, easy or too difficult to replace, complete with or lacking in adequate documentation, always or rarely operable, or somewhere in between these extremes. The same is true for every other element of support. Taken collectively, they constitute the boss’ leadership, actually the leadership of all bosses in the chain above the worker. This leadership stares in the face of every worker every day.

So, now that it’s out there for all to see, what does a worker do with all this leadership, these hundreds if not thousands of leadership messages? The vast majority of workers use these messages to determine how; industriously or lazily, safely or unsafely, courteously or discourteously, knowledgeably or ignorantly, expertly or sloppily, cleanly or uncleanly, openly or close to the vest (admit to errors?), caringly or uncaringly, honestly or dishonestly and so forth to do their work. 

Did I say caringly? Yes, the worker figures out from the quality of all this support whether or not the boss cares about the worker. In addition, whatever that standard for caring is, the worker turns around and uses it to treat the company’s customers and other people in the workplace. 

Did I say honestly? Yes, if the boss states that a particular tool or piece of equipment is adequate while the worker knows this is not true, the worker assumes that the boss knows better and thus concludes that the boss is being dishonest. The message is that a low standard for honesty is OK. "If you can do it so can I" takes over from there.

Please stay tuned to tomorrow's article on the Gateway to Superior Leadership.

Don't Leave Your Brain at the Door

PART I

Listening is not only the gateway to superior leadership but also the doorway to gaining the commitment of subordinates. Listening is the most important of all leadership skills. Leadership at its best is a coherent strategy to cause employees to utilize their full brainpower in performing their work; to be highly creative, productive, motivated and committed rather than turned off and poorly motivated as in "leaving their brain at the door." Although the full strategy is well beyond the scope of this blog, I'll attempt to present how leadership itself really works in a series of articles over the next few days.  [BTW, please note that these daily articles are NOT pushed out via email. You must visit this site (or subscribe to the RSS feed so that you will automatically be notified when new articles are posted) to access the remaining articles of this series that will be posted daily. ]

Deep in the set of normal human temperament is the tendency to broadcast rather than to receive. We would rather talk than listen; rather put out than to take in. Servant Leaders possess a temperament that values listening above talking. When one is leading with a purpose, this disposition causes one to be seen as a servant first. Thus, a leader's listening disposition encompasses getting in touch with one's own inner voice and seeking to understand what one's body, mind, and spirit are communicating. This type of active listening that undergirds the other qualities of servant leadership such as, awareness and empathy, requires listening not just to what others are saying, but also to our own internal voice.

To commit to being a servant leader, you must create time to reflect in order to understand who you are, and how you relate to staff, customers, and the larger community. The self-reflective listening is rooted in a genuine interest in the viewpoints and perspectives of those served. Attentive listening is basically an attitude – really wanting to understand. It is also a technique. But, the technique without the attitude is phony.  Servant leadership is all about taking the time to serve. In essence, a servant leader makes time for people to serve and support – even when there is not any time available.

Tomorrow's article will describe how that is done. Please stay tuned in.