What defines a good leader is often misunderstood as someone who is capable of “running the show.” The reality is that mobilizing others is what makes leaders. Leaders need to be able to innovate and grow others so that they can move forward together.
To do this best, one has to be quiet and just listen. Many times leaders have the right questions in mind and asked, or provided to them, but fail to listen. Listening is the receptive facilitating language for growing others, and it makes them feel important as well. Leadership is therefore never a one-sided process, it is given life by empathy, trust and collaboration.
Crafting the right questions is half of the battle, observing oneself and one’s impulses to be an expert, a problem solver or holder of experience and perspective is the other half.
Here are common leadership pitfalls:
- Expertise-Today’s market, media and PR world, encourages us to act as experts. However, when we position ourselves to be the most experienced person in the room, we position ourselves into the dark abyss of non-listening. The transaction process is what leads to action and transformation.
- Judgment- There are many everyday scenarios which we may feel “uninterested” in because they don’t match with our values, beliefs or previous knowledge. However, we can never really genuinely listen and hear what is going on around us, if we get bored with what is at face value, against our inner voice. Staying engaged always brings value by staying connected, seeing and understanding the deeper meaning of things.
- Human doer- We are by nature doers. However, our culture of work is also a culture of action rather than pausing. Just look at the instances in the economy where with all the opportunity for learning both for people and organizations, our actions proceeded to jump in and “save the day!” Listening and evaluating are more challenging actions, because doing something pushes us beyond the ambiguity we so dislike. However transformative breakthroughs are a result of explorations, and often struggling.
