VIDEO: The Importance of Listening at Work
It all comes down to listening.
There is one inspirational quote that I refer to the most when it comes to discussing my personal management and work style, and the words are of the late and great Dr. Maya Angelou who said
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Dr. Maya Angelou
I have generally found this to be true. As managers and Production staff, if people are forgetting what we say and do, how can we ensure that our teams feel like we value them as crew members, appreciate their contributions, and respect their opinions?
As it turns out, it all comes down to listening - easy to say, surprisingly challenging for management and leaders to do properly.
When it comes to listening and leadership, David Whyte says:
"The core act of leadership must be the act of making conversations real. The conversations of captaincy and leadership are the conversations that forge real relationships between an organization and the world it serves. All around these conversations, the world is still proceeding according to mercies other than our own. This is the ultimate context to our work. The cliff edge of mortality is very near [...] Everything is at stake, and everything in creation, if we are listening, is in conversation with us to tell us so."
- David Whyte
I put the emphasis on "if we are listening," since Whyte adds it in such a gentle, cautionary way. The If of it all - if we are willing, if we are listening specifically, it will unlock the rest of what Whyte is speaking of.
It's an invitation, really. Do you want to be superlative? Are you realizing the magnitude of your situation? Then listen first.
As Celeste Headlee reminds us in We Need to Talk, “Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. The purpose of listening is to understand, not to endorse.” (p.64)
“Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. The purpose of listening is to understand, not to endorse.”
-Celeste Headlee
Supporting this, Amy Cuddy, social psychologist, author of Presence, and the speaker behind the second-most viewed TED talk of all time says
"Real listening can't happen unless we have a sincere desire to understand what we're hearing. And that's not an easy thing to manage, because it requires us to suspend judgment - even when we're feeling frustrated or scared or impatient or bored and even when we feel threatened or anxious about what we're about to hear (because we think we know it or because we don't know it)."
-Amy Cuddy
Listening is so important that Stephen R Covey, author of self-help classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People literally makes it one of the seven habits.
Indeed, Habit 5 is "Seek First to Understand, Then Be Understood." Covey's emphasis on listening is unmistakable as he says:
"If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication."
- Stephen R. Covey
RESOURCES
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey,
We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations that Matter by Celeste Headlee
Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy
Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte
Credit Where Credit is Due: Review of 'Presence' by Amy Cuddy
Poetry in the Workplace: Review of David Whyte's "Crossing the Unknown Sea"
It’s 2020 & I’m a Feminist: Do The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Hold Up?
This video is based on Just Listen: Three Different Career Books on One Key Skill from this blog, published August 2020
