Perfecting the Art of Listening (and Then Responding): Three Thought Starters for People Leaders
As a people leader, your relationships with team members and across your organization always are critical to fostering workplace culture, overcoming challenges, supporting employees and driving business continuity. More so during times of division.
And to do those things in what has been – and will continue to be – a disruptive 2024, you will benefit from not only taking a thoughtful and nuanced approach to sharing information but also listening.
As employees look to you for guidance, here are three recommendations to help ensure you harness the power of listening to navigate potential workplace division and maintain business continuity.
Also, check out our full guidance for people leaders, including actionable tips and real-life scenarios you may encounter, to help you effectively manage your teams throughout this divisive year.
#1: Sharpen Your Active Listening Skills
Right now, it’s essential that you work to understand what and how your team members are thinking and feeling by proactively checking in with them and asking what support they need.
Also, as a people leader, a worse offense than failing to check in with employees is failing to pay attention when you do, so be sure you show your people you care and are actively supporting them.
#2: Be Prepared and Be Agile
While it’s important that you better understand how your team is thinking and feeling, it’s equally important you understand how to maintain control of conversations.
To help navigate difficult conversations, savvy communicators do the following:
- Address the negative
- Redirect the sensitive
- Halt the inappropriate
While off-limits topics will depend on the organization’s policies, team culture, personal relationships and other factors, it’s generally safe to say people leaders should not engage in combative conversations about contentious political topics or allow those discussions to continue when observed.
#3: Look for the Best
Being able to thoughtfully and appropriately respond to the situations described in our full guidance can drive business continuity and team cohesion throughout rocky periods. But you must not forget to also actively listen and search for opportunities to reinforce the things that are going well and the need for continued collaboration, respect and support among your team.
Most importantly, if you want to drive positive change among your team: walk the talk, lead by example and model the behaviors you want to see in others. View our guidance on how to best lead your team through a turbulent year, here.
FleishmanHillard’s Talent + Transformation team delivers business outcomes at the intersection of business and communications strategy. For more than three decades, we have helped industry-leading organizations align their employees behind their most essential business needs, including strategy, culture, transformation, and critical business and functional initiatives.
