Listening is a leadership skill
COMMUNICATION is a key leadership skill that can determine whether a leader is successful or not. A phone call by the US President can lead to an official inquiry just as a tweet with 140 characters can cause a Twitter storm around the world. Effective communication is so critical that even a gifted public speaker like the former US President Barack Obama would rely on teleprompters to ensure that his speeches landed exactly as intended with every word just right. Speechwriters and editors are on staff to help leaders craft their message. In the current age of exploding digital media and multiple channels, expert media consultants advise leaders on their media strategy. The leaders choose their messages and the medium. Depending on the message, it may be best delivered as a live or recorded speech, or a written press statement or social media post, maybe a tweet, or delivered live at some public event, or maybe a television appearance, either on a news show or a late night comedy show, if not a routine or special broadcast. Social media may be used when effective visuals and memes can spread something rapidly, peer to peer. There are many choices and different considerations for choosing the right platforms to deliver the message.
All communication help offered to leaders is based on one of the following: crafting the right message and choosing the channel by which to broadcast the message to the target audiences. This is based on a very top-down hierarchical model of communication. The leader has all the answers and only needs to broadcast them to the followers. This model is failing rapidly. It is creating a divisive world. Everyone is on their soapbox peddling their solution to the world’s problems. The competition among solutions leads to a fight for people’s attention. An info-graphic is replacing power point presentations.
Unreliable information crowds out the reliable message. The audience fails to engage beyond the sound-bite or the meme as their attention span is also dwindling.
My research from Silicon Valley shows how the most important aspect of communication is neglected by all these methods: the art of listening. Communication