Richard Branson says "If you want to stand out as a leader, a good place to begin is by listening.”

Listening a powerful leadership tool. It channels understanding and can even be a catalyst for innovation and transformation within a company. In this article, let’s explore the real power of listening and how it develops trust, respect, and understanding in business and in life.

The Art of Active Listening

Active listening is the art of empathetic listening. It’s a conscious effort to understand and learn more about the situation. As an art, a communication skill, and a basic form of human decency, active listening comes from a place of respect and thoughtfulness. By truly listening, understanding, and paying attention, one can then generate a proper feedback or response that can breed meaningful communication.

On the other hand, the opposite, which is passive hearing, is when one is physically present but not eager or able to understand, engage, and participate in the process. Passive listeners simply try to absorb and process the information without giving meaningful feedback.

Listening in Personal Growth

When practiced with awareness and intention, active listening can fuel personal growth. It is through active listening that one can engage in effective communication, build relationships, and gain clarity. When you are fully present when someone is speaking, you can better understand the situation and ask clarifying questions. As you listen and communicate more effectively, trust is built and relationships are nurtured. These are crucial both in life and in business.

Listening in Startup Goals

Take note that active listening is the ‘conscious effort’ or willingness, eagerness, and readiness” to receive information. If you are a leader in a startup environment, your ability to listen to your team as they suggest ideas or raise concerns can dictate your startup’s future. When you listen and absorb information, you are essentially collecting all the data you need to make the right decisions. As a leader, you need to listen to your customers, employees, mentors, and advisors to shape your business strategies. And when you are able to put yourself in their shoes, you’ll gain even more power as you start making better decisions that benefit all those who matter. And when your stakeholders win, you win!

Building a Listening Culture in Teams

Startups need to move at a rapid pace as they launch products, onboard customers, and grow the team. And more often than not, it can get really chaotic. Proper communication among team members brings order to chaos. As a leader, you need to create opportunities for listening to each other as a team and making sure that everyone is on the same page, every step of the way.

Take Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for example. He makes sure that during meetings, he’s always the last to talk. Their culture is ‘employees should speak first’. He spends the first few minutes of the meeting listening to his team as they share their thoughts. After all, you can only lead your team in the right direction if you take the time to understand what exactly is going on.

Overcoming Common Listening Barriers

Listening barriers are all those that hinder your ability to accurately understand and interpret information and properly give feedback. Listening barriers include:

• Information overload

When giving information to employees, make sure that you don’t overwhelm them to the brink of paralysis. Make their workload more manageable by giving a reasonable amount of information to process and act upon.

• Prejudice or assumptions

This stands in the way of effective listening. In the workplace, there always are assumptive listeners who misinterpret information or hold preconceived notions. They may jump to conclusions even before the speaker has really finished, so you may set a culture of having everyone ask questions after the presentation instead of as the meeting goes.

• Internal and external distractions

It could be literal noise from the external environment or internal psychological noise in the form of anxiety, fatigue, or boredom. It’s important to make sure that the meeting place and time are conducive to everyone attending to make sure that the team is more able to receive information properly.

Conclusion

Listening is more than just a communication skill. It’s actually a tool for setting the right culture in a startup, making sure that everyone correctly gives attention and pays attention. In business and in life, attention can be nourishing. Whatever you focus on and pay attention to thrives and expands. Likewise, anything that you neglect is also bound to collapse. Be strategic with how you give and pay attention. Listen actively instead of passively. These simple things will and shall go a long way in life and in business.

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