"Don’t gimme excuses, gimme results!"
Skipper the penguin barks these words in the family film ‘Madagascar’ which my daughter and I watched at the weekend. They reminded me of one of the two high profile Chief Executives on two different continents who resigned last week. Bill Michael stepped down as Chair of KPMG UK after reportedly telling employees to ‘stop moaning’ about their concerns during the pandemic. Meanwhile in Japan, Yoshiro Mori resigned as Chair of the Tokyo Olympics Organising Committee after allegedly saying that ‘women talk too much’, referring to female executives speaking at board meetings. Both leaders relinquished their posts following internal and external outcry at their comments.
Whilst different in circumstance, both resignations were triggered by a similar failure - the failure to listen. While apologising, Yoshiro Mori admitted that he ‘didn’t talk to women much’. It doesn’t sound as though he spent much time listening to them either. Likewise KPMG consultants’ pandemic-related challenges and concerns about potential paycuts were allegedly brushed aside with brusque advice from their leader to ‘take control of your life’.
Without listening - genuinely listening - to someone, it is impossible to demonstrate empathy and to acknowledge the validity of other people’s perspectives (whether or not you agree with these). The consequences are two-fold. The other party is likely to feel ignored, misunderstood or undervalued. And the person failing to listen misses an opportunity to gain potential valuable information.
When we don't listen properly, we tend to make decisions and take action on the basis of limited or one-sided evidence in front of us. We rely on an incomplete world view. Nobel Prize winning author, psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman calls this ‘wysiati’, or the phenomenon of ‘what you see is all there is’. We don’t often stop to look for Donald Rumsfeld’s famous ‘unknown unknowns’ or to discover what is lurking in our ‘blindspot’, if you’re familiar with the Johari window.
When people feel ignored, an organisation’s culture becomes shaped by those who dominate the conversation. Employees who have different perspectives and experiences become excluded from the debate and may be judged less positively than those who share the prevailing view. This can lead to group think, a reluctance to challenge constructively, and marginalised individuals and groups.
It’s no surprise to learn then that multiple surveys indicate that only around one third of UK workers say they are engaged i.e. motivated and able to give of their best at work each day. This is a problem for businesses as well as the individual: there is firm
correlation
between employee engagement and high organisational productivity and performance across all sectors.
There is much talk lately in business, politics and the press about the rise of the empathetic leader in light of the pandemic and the need for greater emotional intelligence in the workplace. So how do organisations foster this?
A good place to start is with active listening. Not just by leaders, but by all of us, as managers and/or colleagues. Individuals can be trained in core skills such as effective listening and chairing meetings inclusively and organisations can implement multi-faceted listening strategies, including using employee networks to test assumptions and gather a variety of perspectives.
By actively listening in many different ways and publicly acknowledging what is being heard, we can build empathy and a more collective, inclusive culture. A genuine sense of being in this together, regardless of our different personal situations, roles and seniority. As Marty the zebra tells Alex the lion in Madagascar: ‘We’re a team. You and me, remember?'.