Listen to Lead
Article | Accountability Insights
Do you remember the lessons learned from Enron, Drexel Burnham, AIG, and WorldCom? Leaders who stop listening to their people can never sustain organizational success. Unfortunately, it happens all too often, even in the best run companies.
Remembering can help us to listen better. Remember when The New York Times discovered that one of its reporters had been plagiarizing stories and inventing interviews that never happened? As you may recall, it created such a crisis at the citadel of journalistic integrity and professionalism that the executive editor was forced to resign. By most accounts, the executive editor had been superb at his job—more Pulitzer Prizes had been won under his leadership than at any other time in the newspaper’s history. However, he had a serious weakness when it came to listening to his people. Most of his staff considered him to be arrogant, domineering, and biased toward his favorite reporters. Apparently, he had informally separated his staff into stars and nonstars, making it difficult for the nonstars to be heard and the stars to be questioned. What resulted was a culture that effectively shut down candid feedback, open dialogue, and inclusion of all viewpoints—so much for journalistic integrity.
If you want your people to take greater accountability for achieving your organization’s desired results (and avoid catastrophes such the ones cited above), listen to them—all of them. Often. Here are a few tips: Exchange feedback around Key Results, cultural values/beliefs, and major issues with someone different every day. Be vigilant.
| • | Exchange feedback around Key Results, cultural values/beliefs, and major issues with someone different every day. Be vigilant. | |
| • | Walk in your employees’ shoes by joining them on a sales call, handling a customer complaint, filling an order, delivering a service, or taking a hand on the assembly line, so that you can appreciate what each employee in the organization actually does. | |
| • | Help people align their aspirations with their contributions by clarifying how different types and levels of contributions or value creation correspond to different types and levels of compensation and reward. Then provide multiple career paths that give people of varying talents and ambitions the opportunity to maximize their contributions and rewards. | |
| • | Express your disappointment every time someone in the organization places people in categories or classes based on personality, ambition, lifestyle, or favoritism. Encourage everyone to focus on achieving the Key Results. | |
| • | Keep the size of your organization’s project or cross-functional teams small so that everyone has a chance to actively participate and valuably contribute. There is nothing more egalitarian and mutually benefitting than a well-composed team that draws on the talents and perspectives of each team member. |
Listening to all viewpoints in an organization isn’t easy, but it’s the only way to treat employees as valuable assets and promote a Culture of Accountability that respects and rewards everyone’s contribution. To learn more about how listening can make you a better leader, join our Accountability Community at www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review the stories and case studies of actual people and organizations. Culture of Accountability and
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