After interviewing business leaders at over 100 companies, the authors of a 2012 Harvard Business Review article concluded: "Smart leaders today … engage with employees in a way that resembles an ordinary person-to-person conversation." According to the authors, an essential part of "ordinary person-to-person conversation" involves listening well and getting honest feedback.
They use the following story as an example: James E. Rogers, the president and CEO at Duke Energy, instituted a series of what he called "listening sessions." In a series of three-hour meetings, he invited the people he led to raise any pressing issues. He also asked for their brutally honest feedback about his own leadership performance. The authors of the article wrote:
He asked employees at one session to grade him on a scale of A to F.
The results, recorded anonymously, immediately appeared on a screen for all to
see. The grades were generally good, but less than half of the employees were
willing to give him an A. He took the feedback seriously and began to conduct
the exercise regularly. He also began asking open-ended questions about his
performance. Somewhat ironically, he found that "internal
communication" was the area in which the highest number of participants
believed he had room for improvement. Even as Rogers sought to get close to
employees by way of [conversation], a fifth of his people were urging him to
get closer still. True listening involves taking the bad with the good,
absorbing criticism even when it is direct and personal—and even when those
delivering it work for you.
Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, "Leadership Is a Conversation," Harvard Business Review (June 2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment