Leadership Lessons 21 : Listening skills are as important as expressive skills..

 Leadership Lessons 21

Listening attitude and skills are not only important for learning but an important aspects of leadership quality . Listening skills are as important as expressive skills..

This is well explained in the Bible :' Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry(James 1:19)

In any leadership roles, there will be many occasions of negotiating with partners, colleagues, fence sitters, clients, vendors and opponents . Negotiations are a part and parcel of the professional management, deal making and various kinds of leadership in government, trade unions, politics, private sector and organizations .

Those with leadership qualities need to first listen carefully and with full attention. This helps one to see where the other person/organization come from, his/her perspective, interest and issues. The ability to listen and learning help to respond to a situation or a person in an effective manner or to avoid an unpleasant situation.

The depth of domain knowledge in a particular field is indeed important. Because domain knowledge help you not only to mentor people but also help you to be relevant and provide intellectual leadership within in a given field.

Leadership is also the ability to learn new skills in a fast changing context. This could be in terms technology, communications, language, presentations and process. Skill development is a continuous process and those with excellent leadership quality will be ahead of the game in terms of learning new skills. When working in a multi-cultural contexts, it is also important to learn cultural skills- from greetings, to understand-kinship, nuanced uses of language, food etc.

Adapting to multi -cultural context requires an ability to listen, observe and learn new language context and skill -sets. For example, many people may think using chop-stick is not a big deal. It is a big -deal in some context. If you are in China or Vietnam or Korea, the ability to use chop-stick matters . Because it is also a cultural signalling..

In many cultures, punctuality is sacrosanct. If you are late by five or ten minutes in South Asia, it is ' normal 'and it is considered OK. Many ministers and leaders ,in South Asia even, come a bit late to show off thier ' busy schedule '. But in many European, American or Japanese context, being late can cost you a business deal or send wrong signals.

Similarly learning the nuances of 'dress-code' matters. In some cultures, formal dress could mean different. For example, if you go to meet a high official in China , they expect you to be well -dressed and this often mean a formal suit.In a multi-cultural contexts body language, the use of words etc matter a lot. In some cultures when they say "Yes' - it simply means that they are 'listening' as distinct from that they 'agree' with you.

One of the challenges that many people face is that they decide that they don't want to learn any thing new or go our of their way to acquire a new skill or knowledge process.

When I was working with a set of young people with leadership qualities, few of them said " I don't like doing training or even organizing one- as it does not 'interest me'. " The chances are such people often don't go a long way in terms of their leadership capabilities . Because, in leadership role one has to keep learning many things that you are 'not used to '.

I have had the opportunity to become a Chief Executive Officer in my twenties. One of my major challenges was to understand finance, read a balance sheet or to understand what was 'cash in hand' or 'bank reconciliation'. I did not understand a thing about 'auditing'. Many of them terms used by our Chartered accountant looked Greek to me. Because every field has its 'jargons' and if you don't understand the basic concept you get confused.

My academic disciplines were far away from accounting and finance. So the first thing I did was to go to a book stall and get all those books on accounting and finance. I spent two weeks reading and taking notes and understanding the concepts. Then I had to seek the help of a friend to understand and read a balance sheet.

In fact, without basic understanding of finance, accounting and audits it is not possible effectively to manage an organisation or a business.

Despite my basic understanding of the finance management and accounting, when I moved to a huge and complex international organisation, one had to learn budgeting, budget tracking, expenditure efficiency, cost-effectiveness and a whole different things of complex accounts and finance management. Though temperamentally, I am not 'used to ' finance and accounting, it was important to understand finance, budget and accounts to manage an organisation. Because finance, and systems of finance management is what eventually sustain an organisation.

In leadership roles, technology play and important role. For example, accessing a document or file in a quick manner requires a lots of skills. In these times, documentation is more or less digital. And this is a skill one has to keep updating as documentation process keep changing.

JS Adoor

To be continued

50James Varghese, Methilaj MA and 48 others

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