Leading Through Listening
Happy New Year! (We’re still staying that, right)? It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything beyond the normal shoutouts. As I tell students and colleagues alike: your writing improves by reading and writing … a lot. It’s time to get busy because none of us has crossed the elusive finish line.
Sadly, there’s no topic that matches the firehose of news that has drenched us in recent weeks: massive and devastating wildfires in California, terrorism in New Orleans, and a political environment that has us at each other’s throats.
But they all remind me of a few important leadership behaviors.
Your teams will talk about this stuff. Maybe with you, maybe with each other. But they’re human and want to talk it out. Their work will likely improve if they feel they work in an open - and respectful - environment. And these conversations will go better if you’ve already built an environment of trust and safety during the quieter times.
Anyone who worked for me knows I enjoyed starting staff meetings (and most conversations) with soft chit chat. (I surely sucked up valuable time from people who were ready to get busy and get home). It was my way of building trust. If you show genuine interest in people’s lives and share a little more than you need to share, there’s a better chance they’ll walk across the hot coals for you (it’s also a decent human behavior). It takes some bravery … but as a C student working for an A+ company, I was already playing with house money.
Leadership is harder when controversial or devastating news hits everyone in the face (9/11, the pandemic, and the death of George Floyd are easy examples). Your team will want to talk, and you need to figure out a way to make it work. You aren’t there to dissect and fix problems that you can’t fix, but you are there to hear the fears and concerns of people around you. You go into these conversations with confidence if you’ve created an environment of trust and respect. People may disagree with one another, and that’s OK. The foundation of trust will prevent difficult pitfalls. If you dive into the deep end having not established the right behaviors and environment, teams will be hesitant to be open, leading to stilted conversations that aren’t helpful.
I’m certain supervisors are wrestling with how to address a wide variety of topics on the minds of their teams, and I hope they’ve created an environment where it’s OK to be open, disagree, and show human behaviors. Even at work, we’re human first.