You’re a leader. Lots of people want your ear. You know it’s important to listen — so you make time as best you can.
The people who want your attention can be clever about meeting up with you. A mid-level editor at a Poynter seminar told me how she noticed that her top boss visited the vending machine at the same time daily. So she occasionally showed up at the same time. She might want to share something – the good job a reporter did on a story — or to just take the opportunity to say hello.
Those random conversations are valuable. They help make connections. They present an opportunity to learn something, hear about a success or share concerns. But your staff shouldn’t have to find you. If you want listening to become a hallmark of your leadership, then you’ll want to apply some serious energy to initiating and increasing your efforts. It’s not always easy to listen.
A dozen years ago, I learned straight up what it meant to be a good listener. I was managing editor when our company began surveying employees about how they felt about their jobs, their bosses and the company. It was not pretty. We were going through a lot of change. New leaders were coming in from outside and talked about doing things differently. Standards would be raised and measured. Employees were fearful of what all this meant. And they had legitimate beefs.
In the newsroom, performance reviews were seldom on time. The staff perceived favoritism in promotions and raises. They wanted more and regular communication. They wanted their bosses and supervisors to be more accessible.
We established work groups on particular issues. People could volunteer. The groups were asked for specific changes that would make a difference in the current situations. It wasn’t easy inside the groups. There was not one mind-set. Views ranged from radical suggestions that would overturn the status quo to others that would give management guidance, not dictates. Top newsroom leaders were not part of any of the groups, though we were asked in to offer management perspective. We stayed close to the work groups through their leaders. We coached from the sidelines as needed.
The outcome was the beginning of better processes in the newsroom and evidence for the staff that top editors listened and acted on their hard work.
Employee satisfaction surveys can seem ominous. If used punitively, they can lose effectiveness. If used to build better ways to operate and better direction for leaders’ efforts, they can help a newsroom or the company make progress.
As rough as some of the days and weeks were in the wake of the survey and the work groups, I doubt we’d have come up with better ideas or been able to sell top-down solutions in that climate of mistrust.
Here’s what I learned about listening:
We got to better solutions because the people most affected influenced the outcomes.
The staff’s practical views added realities to the leaders’ higher-level vision.
The likelihood increases that leaders will arrive at sound, workable decisions when they seek a range of perspectives.
The staff experiences the challenges of seeing the context and of working within the bigger picture.
As messy as it was, we took small steps in building trust and relationships.
Longer-term, the listening helped chart a course to increased involvement of staff not just in problem-solving but also in shaping initiatives for the future.
Whether you are listening at the candy machine or maneuvering through staff work groups, consider devising a purpose or strategy that drives your listening. For example, many news staffs have concerns about doing more with less. How is your newsroom stamina in this regard? In what ways could you tap into your staff’s perspective and assess how things are going?
Once you see a vision for listening, here are some final guiding thoughts:
Continue to value the voices you trust and respect.
Find new and different voices to broaden what you hear.
Once you listen, take some action, even if to just acknowledge the value of what you are hearing.
As often as possible, act on what you hear.
Listen fully, even to the voices that may grate on you.
Cultivate honesty in your discussions.
One of the moments that stays with me in the wake of the employee survey was the presentation of a pair of gifts from one of the work groups. The first was a small wooden plaque that recognized me as an official team member. The second was a small silver flask that I could fill with my choice of relief for newsroom tension headaches. I’ve kept these in my office ever since as a reminder of the power of listening.
