To be understood - listen

Success in business and organisation life, today, is so dependent on how well we work with others.

You know your business needs to improve, but you are struggling to make things happen.  Very often you and your team seem to be on a different page and tensions deepen.  Growth doesn’t happen.

This is a familiar and sad picture of so many businesses, departments, and teams.  Whether public or private sector, large business or small; such situations hamper real improvement and growth.  Leaders become defensive and use reams of charts and data to justify their situation.

How well do you know the things troubling your team, the opportunities they see but nobody really listens, and nothing seems to happen?  Are you confident you are on the same page?  Do your team understand you and do you understand them?

Most likely you want to answer yes; but are you sure – what are you doing to find out.  Are you working on a survey of 1 – YOU.

We all live and work in systems of one kind or size.  We are impacted by the people and things around us.  We depend upon them and also affect them by our words, actions – or lack of.  It is so easy to damage people by the wrong words and actions, research proves this time and again.

The domineering command and control days of barking orders at staff are mostly gone and not a leadership style I would expect of anyone reading to this now.  Successful leadership today is much more about building 2-way trust and respect that creates space for influence and joint developmental working.  Listening to others, seeking to understand them before trying to be understood is a key ingredient to successful leadership in any situation.

Leadership of systems is a significant subject and one where, as a consultancy, Tricordant do a lot of work and where our consultant team have had lots of practical experience as senior organisational executives prior to consultancy.  For now, though and in the context of growth and improvement I want to focus in on your immediate eco-system; that which is around you all the time.  The system in which you are the leader.  That system may be a small number of people or could be a significant group.  It doesn’t really matter, the scale may be different, but the principles are exactly the same.

Does this sound familiar to you?  It certainly does for me.  I worked in many such teams.  I vowed I would not make the same mistakes as a leader.  I know I wasn’t perfect, but I learned lessons that really helped with my leadership and now as a consultant to organisations of all shapes and sizes.

I wanted to share some of those lessons so wrote a Tricordant Guide short e-book ‘5 Winning Ideas to Improve your Business Results’.  For each of the winning ideas I have also produced a short video and some further written material delivered by email to help guide you to achieve results and continued success.

In the e-book I say that you should embrace your eco-system.  The first step is being clear on who makes up your eco-system; for example, your staff, customers, suppliers, outsourced agencies, the processes, products, and services you supply; not forgetting areas such as the media and especially today social media. Oh, and don’t forget new employees.  During the first few weeks and months they can be a rich source of valuable data on your company culture.

You need to spend quality time in and with your eco-system.  This is a fundamental for great leaders.  Get involved, know and be known.  Listen, observe, discuss – you will learn so much as others learn from you.  Joint understanding and trust will skyrocket.

If you want to be understood then here is a top tip;

Positively engaging with and listening to your eco system will get amazing results.

Its time to grow, to improve your business and your leadership in the process.

Getting started on your improvement journey has 3 simple action steps:

Read the e-book and watch the videos
Decide which improvement idea you want to start with
Be a successful leader focused on growth and improvement
So, take the first step today: download and read the e-book then watch the videos

Within an hour you can be on your way to feeling like you are growing; knowing results will follow and already listening to others in a different way.