On the whole, most leaders either love the generally fast pace of corporate life or, if they don’t, have learnt how to work within it without being mown down by it. It can be exhilarating and full of passion and true creativity but more often than not it tends to result in an almost robotic movement from one meeting, one topic to another hoping you have brought something akin to your A game each time.
One thing that can be missing in this constant fast pace is the practise of real listening. Listening to understand. Listening to appreciate. Listening to see and hear the other person. And within all of that listening to receive something new, a new insight, a new inspiration.
Many will be familiar with the work of Otto Scharmer with Theory U in which he invites a deeper level of sensing moving from the concrete, rational mind to the full use of our other senses. To do this we need space and a willingness to listen in a new way. So often we go from problem to action. From thinking to doing. What if we put in a few more stages in which we practise deeper listening, observing, gathering and then reformulating.
‘But this takes too much precious time!’ I can hear leaders shout…and like many things of value we have to be willing to break a cycle to yield the benefits of a new approach. Deeper listening will save time by helping us to arrive at the ‘best’ possible actions rather than those that are immediately obvious and/or habitualised and from which we then have to take another set of actions to remedy gaps.
Not everything needs deep listening of course, but the important things usually do. And like most new skills, once practised regularly we are more able to call on them much more quickly and effectively when needed.