Study after study has shown that listening is critical to leadership effectiveness. So, why are so few leaders good at it?
 

Too often, leaders seek to take command,
direct conversations, talk too much, or worry
about what they will say next in defense
or rebuttal.  

The ability and willingness to listen with empathy is often what sets a leader apart.  Hearing words is not adequate; the leader truly needs to work at understanding the position and perspective of the others involved in the conversation. 

In a recent interview, Paul Bennett, Chief Creative Officer at IDEO, advises leaders to listen more and ask the right question.  Bennett shared that “for most of my twenties I assumed that the world was more interested in me than I was in it, so I spent most of my time talking, usually in a quite uninformed way, about whatever I thought, rushing to be clever, thinking about what I was going to say to someone rather than listening to what they were saying to me.”

by John Coleman