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The best leaders share a common secret: they lead successfully because they listen effectively. Good listening, however, seems to be a rare managerial skill. Unfortunately, many people work with leaders who interrupt, are rude and rude, and devalue their direct reports. Imagine how your negative behavior damages the morale, productivity and effectiveness of your organizations.

Manny Steil and I have spent more than 50 years of combined work researching, writing, consulting, teaching, and training in the areas of listening and leadership. Over the past three years, we’ve interviewed more than 100 leaders from around the world, including CEOs and frontline leaders, educators, business people, pastors, military officers, pilots, celebrities, and homemakers. Regardless of the role they play, these individuals understand the definition of listening leadership: guiding self and others toward positive outcomes for the betterment of all through better sensing, interpreting, evaluating, storing, and responding to messages. Based on our research, we have developed 10 golden rules for effective listening. Here, we’ll focus on the first rule, which is critical to both listening and leading: build a strong foundation.

Do you hear what I hear?
Leaders who listen recognize that listening and leading are inseparable and that listening is the best way to learn the true needs, expectations, and desires of your followers. Peter Nulty, a member of Fortune Magazine’s National Business Hall of Fame, aptly observed: “Of all the leadership skills, listening is the most valuable and one of the least understood. Most captains of industry listen only to times, and they remain ordinary. leaders, but a few, the great ones, never stop listening”. As he focuses on building a strong foundation for success, he understands these five universal listening facts:
Listening is our main communication activity. More than half a century of research in the field of listening shows that we spend 80 percent of our waking hours communicating. At least 45 percent of that time is spent listening. For leaders, the total time spent listening is even higher. Numerous studies identify listening as the most critical skill for leadership success, and employers consistently rank it as one of the top five skills they expect from employees. As leadership responsibilities grow, the importance of listening increases dramatically.

Listening is an innate, learned and impossible behavior. Listening is driven by a combination of instinctive, inherent, and innate forces. Listening, in all its complexity, is also a measurable, observable and improvable behaviour. Research reveals that most people do not listen well. Immediately after listening to a 10-minute presentation, the average listener has heard, correctly understood, correctly evaluated, stored, and adequately responded to about half of what was said. Within 48 hours, that drops to a final effectiveness level of 25 percent. However, the evidence shows that, with effort, the effectiveness of listening can be improved. As a result of the guided effort, listening leaders have improved their awareness and attitude, increased their knowledge, and improved listening skills.

Listening badly is expensive. Although listening is critical to the success of all leaders, few have received training on how to be good listeners. As a result, many have developed costly and self-defeating listening habits. The costs are staggering. Ineffective and inefficient listening results in extraordinary losses of time, money, productivity, customer service, self-esteem, reputation, opportunities, and more. On the other hand, effective, efficient, and productive listeners benefit in many ways.

Responsible and active listeners are productive listeners. Unfortunately, most leaders operate under the assumption that it is the speaker’s responsibility to ensure successful communication, so they become passive listeners. Our experience clearly shows that the passive listener is always a poor listener and an ineffective leader. Rather, outstanding leaders take responsibility for the success of all communications to and from them. By listening, these leaders show an attitude of responsibility and exhibit concrete behaviors of productive and involved activity.

Listening can only be mastered to the extent that it has been developed. Many listeners delude themselves into the assumption that they can hear well when they really need to, want to, or have to. Could not be farther from the truth. In reality, listeners can only “will” to listen to the level at which they have developed such skills. Second, the assumption that you can do more if necessary interferes with the investment needed to focus, grow, and improve. Productive listeners understand their strengths and limitations and constantly strive for higher levels of performance.

Leadership by listening in practice
John DiBiaggio, one of the many listening leaders we interviewed, has spent his career in higher education administration, serving as president of several institutions, including Michigan State and Tufts universities and the University of Connecticut. “I’ve often said that you show your intelligence not by what you say, but by what you ask for,” says DiBiaggio. “If you know how to listen, you will concentrate on what the other person is trying to tell you.” For example, when experienced managers see certain situations recurring in the workplace, they must be willing to listen to other staff members and consider unique approaches. “If students on campus start a protest, for example, you might say to yourself, ‘I’ve seen protests before and I know what to do,'” DiBiaggio says. “However, other staff members who are also experiencing the protest might have other ideas about what you should do in that situation.

I had to teach myself to listen to what people were saying in every situation and not jump to a conclusion right away.” Listening and leading go hand in hand. Exceptional leaders focus intensely on the value of building a strong foundation of listening and leading. you will join their ranks.