As leaders it is important to be leading with empathy and wisdom, both of which are difficult to achieve as a team of one. While ultimately there will be many decisions that you are responsible for, even some of which you cannot change due to various uncontrollable factors, good leaders take the time to ensure that those they lead feel heard. This means involving and inviting them into the conversation, and ensuring that if they come to talk to you, they leave feeling their the time they invested in the discussion with you, wasn’t wasted. “You aren’t listening to me,” is a common phrase that nearly every parent or educator has heard from a child or student in their lives. This can be a charged or misleading phrase since oftentimes as parents and educators when we tell a student to “listen” we mean for them to comply. A teacher with an unruly class may be upset that the students don’t listen, by which they really mean they won't take direction or comply. We even say this to our students, that they don’t listen well, or need to listen better. From here, we can see how students grow to associate ‘listen’ with ‘comply.’ 

I think that sometimes we carry the same as adults, where we unconsciously still make this association. So when speaking to leaders who don’t take feedback into consideration, they are seen as ‘not listening’ because that feedback doesn’t translate to compliance. As an example, if a teacher told their principal that the school should change the way they do duty, the principal may listen and take those suggestions into consideration but ultimately not make any changes. Here, the teacher may feel that they were not heard and their suggestions ignored.

This is something to be mindful of as leaders. We can certainly listen by using active listening skills such as rephrasing, consolidating information, asking clarifying questions and focusing on the conversation since this all goes a long way towards making people feel they have been listened to. But beyond that, we also need to ensure they feel heard which includes an acknowledgement that we have listened, digested, considered and taken the feedback in.

You can engage in a full conversation and utilize every active listening skill in your repertoire and still have people feeling like they haven’t been heard. Again, this may be because they equate being heard and listened to with taking their suggested actions. While this interpretation is not your fault, it does become your concern.

A trap to avoid is in being silent since it can be taken as agreement and thus be misleading. Similarly, platitudes such as ‘I’ll consider that’ may feel as if you are simply brushing them off. 

Instead it is a good idea to discuss which ideas you feel may have merit, or, explain why you are going in another direction. If you need time to consider, then that’s ok too as long as you make time to follow up with that person as well. Circling back shows not only that you have heard them, but that you have been thinking about the conversation so even if you do go another way, they can feel that you have been considering it. The only caveat is be sure that you take the time to have the conversation and you don’t just deliver a one liner like ‘we decided to go another way’ in passing. 

Taking the time to make your thinking transparent is important, since it not only gives people the opportunity to share in it, it also can be used to invite them to help you refine it to make an even better plan. This invites them into a collaborative conversation so they don’t feel that when they speak your mind is already made up and you are simply humouring them.