LEADERSHIP IS LISTENING AND LEARNING
Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash
There are lots of classifications of leadership style; a common one is:
Autocratic Leadership: There is one leader and he or she makes decisions or gives direction based solely on his/her view of things.
Democratic Leadership: Leaders are selected by voting and make decisions or give direction based on polling for majority or plurality views of those who are being led.
Consensus Leadership: Leaders build consensus to have a group 100% behind decisions and directions.
Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages based on speed, degree of buy-in, and sustainability of the decisions and directions, but all have their downside. Autocratic leadership can lead to rebellion and underground revolt, Democratic leadership can devolve into political factions over time, and Consensus is notoriously hard to reach and can be fragile.
There is a fourth leadership style that may yield the best combination of buy-in, speed, and sustainability, and that is Consultative Leadership.
In Consultative Leadership, there is a leader who is ultimately accountable for decisions and directions. A leader must make decisions by listening to and learning from key groups, especially those who will implement the decisions and SMEs who provide essential insights. It is not the leaders’ job to debate with or convince these groups, but rather to explain his/her thinking, to listen open-mindedly to their input, to learn from that input, and to then make the decision based on what the leader has learned. Others may be consulted or offer input without being consulted, and the leader’s job is the same for these.
Obviously Consultative Leadership places a high value on the leader’s ability to listen and learn. It will require the leader to transcend what has been called “automatic listening.” Automatic listening is binary – it is listening that includes biases such as “do I agree or disagree with what is being said?”, “do I like it or dislike it?”, “is it right or wrong, good or bad, make me look good or not, etc.” The alternative to automatic listening is “generous listening.” Generous listening is based in self-awareness, combining generosity and curiosity along with a keen regard for the vision, values, strategy, and mission for which the leader is responsible.
Generosity starts with the assumption that, no matter how odd something sounds or how much one may initially disagree, the intentions of the person speaking to me are good and aligned with mine and the organization’s. Given that assumption, there may be something they are seeing that I am not, and so listening generously will expand my view of the situation about which I am to make a decision, or they have some facts I don’t have that will benefit my process. Alternatively, perhaps there are facts I have that they don’t and when they learn them, they will buy in more strongly based on our mutually aligned view. This is where curiosity comes in – once the leader assumes good intention on the other person’s part, he/she can’t dismiss their views, but must get curious as to how the person got to their position and learn from it.
Finally, the Consultative Leader will have to abandon much of their habitual way of listening. For one thing, most of the time what most people call listening is really preparing. We listen long enough to determine what to say based on the binaries of automatic listening, and then we wait to say it. The Consultative Leader has to actually listen with an open mind and heart. For most people, most of the time, the test for whether someone is listening is agreement – if they’re really listening, they’ll agree. For both the Consultative Leader and the person being consulted, the test for listening must be learning – did I learn something? Do I understand what is being communicated, and would the person who is speaking agree that I understand?
In an organization or team that creates a culture of leadership as listening and learning, people will be engaged, feel valued, and gladly work with the leader as well as leading themselves. Consultative Leadership starts with listening for the value in what anyone communicates, without regard to the form of the communication – for example, consider the possibility that every complaint comes from a commitment to the organization and what it is about, and may hide a request for change.
Too often in organizations, leaders fall short of requesting what is really needed out of a fear that they may encounter resistance or there may not be adequate resources, or other considerations. In Consultative Leadership, an alternative principle might be “ask for what you want, knowing you may not get it.” Two other principles are – “ask for what you want, not what you think you can get,” and in Wayne Gretzky’s words, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Consultative Leadership goes a long way toward ameliorating these concerns. If a leader’s job is to listen and learn, no request need be out of bounds – the response to any request, however seemingly outlandish or unrealistic it might be, becomes an opportunity for learning and seeing things from a new angle.
John Steinbeck, in America and Americans, said:
Now we face the danger which in the past has been most destructive to the human: success — plenty, comfort, and ever-increasing leisure. No dynamic people has ever survived these dangers. If the anesthetic of satisfaction were added to our hazards, we would not have a chance of survival as Americans.
If Steinbeck was correct, leaders face an apparent double-bind: On the one hand, satisfaction, Steinbeck says, is “the danger…most destructive to human success,” but failure is a career killer and to be avoided at all cost. Again, Consultative Leadership resolves this dilemma. The reason for Steinbeck’s and others’ dim view of success is that too often nothing is learned from succeeding – people take the credit and the plaudits and move on, never stopping to examine why they succeeded and what is to be learned from it. Failure, on the other hand, provides an enormous opportunity for learning.
Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
Both succeeding and failing require a significant investment of resources – with success, the return on the investment lies in achieving the intended outcome. For a Consultative Leader, the ROI of failure is learning. If the leader has invested the equivalent of $5 million in time, money, and labor, they will demand of themselves that they find $5 million worth of learning to recoup the investment.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ― Maya Angelou
The Consultative Leader’s commitment to learning, and its inseparable companion listening, creates a game-changing shift in orientation. As the leader’s engagement with the people and circumstances of work shifts, so too do those of people around him – people working with a Consultative Leader are more engaged, more inspired, and more creative than those working under the other three types of leadership.