Evaluating the Importance of Listening in Leadership

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OVERVIEW

Let´s focus on communication, specifically listening. , As employees each of you have a leadership role based on your positions. In these positions you are required to take instructions, present guidance, make decisions, and implement policy. If you cannot listen effectively, you will miss critical instructions, mislead guidance, make less informed decisions, and hopefully never implement the wrong policies.

Listen as a leader taps into a range of understanding, ideas, and cooperative sentiments that failing to listen to leads to poor understanding or interpretation of orders and incorrect evaluations what you may hear; addressing these issues now allows for recognition and adapting personal attitudes to be more effective leaders (Simmons, 2011).

Let us get started with the main purpose we are gathered her today.

GREAT LEADERS

NOTE: Allow image to bring forth mental picture of leaders, pause for quotes then…

We are all familiar with Gen Powell and his first quote is a real fact each of us have experienced in our careers. I personally thought of three examples reading his first quote on leaders I did not want to go to because I felt they heard me, but did not listen.

Each of us have learned in various Professional Military Education how listening is the process of receiving, comprehending, and recalling a specific message; failure to do such can literally compromise missions, loss of resources, and be a matter of life and death.

Listening leadership entails more than just the appearance of listening; it is a transformation where the leader becomes a listening communicator who does not pay false attention, pretend to comprehend, or ignore members (Stillion Southard & Wolvin, 2009). In fact, t...

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...rs, contingencies, and outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 787-818. doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0441

Simmons, R. (2011). Leadership and listening: The reception of user voice in today's public

services. Social Policy & Administration, 45(5), 539-568. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9515.2011.00790.x

Stillion Southard, B. F., & Wolvin, A. D. (2009). Jimmy Carter: A case study in listening

leadership. International Journal of Listening, 23(2), 141-152. doi:10.1080/10904010903014467

Rane, D. B. (2011). Good listening skills make efficient business sense. IUP Journal of Soft

Skills, 5(4), 43-51.

Walesh, S. G. (2012). The leader within you: Let it come out!. Leadership & Management in

Engineering, 12(1), 37-38. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)LM.1943-5630.0000154

Wallace, R. (2013). Critical listening: Sensible ways to teach a neglected skill. The Missouri

Reader, 37(1), 20.

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