Listening Is Not A Competition, But Too Many Leaders Treat It Like One

By Jayson Krause, Managing Director of Level 52 & Author of The Science Behind Success

Garbage in, garbage out. The quality you put into anything is what you’ll get out of everything.

This is one of the core concepts we teach in our Accelerated Leader Programs that help managers and executives develop the mindset and method to differentiate themselves from others.

Your leadership success rests on the inputs you choose to deliver into your environment. There is one critical input that is so simple that if it’s not pointed out, you’ll likely bypass it for a bigger, fancier cultural weapon. That critical input is the art of listening.

When used in the right way, listening is a fundamental, gateway skill to better relationships, engagement, and results. There are so many articles that tell leaders they need to shut up and listen, but where do you start?

Here’s the thing. I don’t need to teach you how to listen. You know how to listen, but what you likely don’t know is where to focus your attention. Focusing on the right thing is fundamental to creating experiences that your peers and direct reports will value. What you pay attention to when you listen will determine whether you attract or repel people in your business.

There are three areas of focus you need to manage and master if you want to deliver meaningful leadership into your organization. We call them the CDEs of listening: Competitive, Discovery, and Empathetic.

Competitive Listening

We’ve all been in conversations with leaders who treat airtime as a competition. The more words, the more power. This is the unspoken game that’s being played when you're conversing with someone who communicates competitively. These people don’t only compete for airtime, but also for the attention. They love to steal the spotlight and have a world-class ability to transform any question or thought you have into something about them.

When you listen with a competitive focus, the attention is on you, what’s in your mind, and what you think about what the other person is saying. You listen to your own thoughts, opinions, judgements, and feelings in real time. When you listen with an unconscious and competitive focus, you are pretty much unaware of the person speaking and simply filter what is being said through your own interpretations and experiences. Often, you are completely oblivious of your impact on the other person. You don’t really hear them talk and often interrupt with advice or a story from your experience. When someone else is speaking, you’re likely thinking about what to say next in the conversation, and only taking in tidbits of what the other person is saying. You listen to prove a point, one-up the other person, or compete for airtime.

Unconscious competitive listeners are at the top of the podium of Olympic leadership glory. They snatch the metaphorical baton right out of your hands and sprint laps in a race of their own creation, around a track without a purpose and in front of an audience that bought tickets for something else. But boy, do they feel good because they think they’re doing something remarkable.

As a subject matter expert, you have probably been taught to listen to solve issues and close gaps on problems quickly. It’s important to be able to do that, but this is a very transactional method that will ultimately hold you back as a leader.

There are times when competitive listening is the correct approach, but the problem is that most leaders default to a competitive focus. Competitive listening is great when you need to solve a problem, but as a leader, it’s your job to help people solve their own problems. So stop relying on competitive listening and learn to focus on discovery.

Discovery Listening

When I was on my first date with the woman who is now my wife, we were engaged in such a deep discussion that we didn’t stop until the lights in the restaurant started flickering. The server came up to tell us that we were the only ones left in the building other than the staff, and that they were waiting for us to leave so they could go home. We were completely oblivious to anything going on around us because we were so present and curious with one another. Nothing mattered except the words the other person was sharing. This is an example of extreme discovery listening. When your focus is on discovery, you are so intensely focused on what the other person is saying that nothing will distract you.

Rather than focusing on your own thoughts, ideas, and advice, you hold a sharp focus on the other person. You are deeply curious about what they say and ask more questions to discover more about them and the way they see their world. When you are present and listening from a true place of discovery, you can often recall many of the details the other person shared. This is the space where you can generate connection, exploration, and robust discussion.

The input provided by discovery listening is twofold. First, it makes the person speaking to you feel genuinely valued because they have your undistracted attention. Second, you can ask great questions (a leadership superpower) because you are receiving better data than you would when interfering and listening with a competitive focus.

Empathetic listening

What would the black-belt version of listening be? You’d see things other people easily miss. Just like discovery listening, empathetic listening is also directed towards the other person, but it has a wider focus to pick up on things beyond just the words they’re saying. You start to notice other things—body language, the inflections and tone of their voice, their pauses and hesitations. When you listen with an empathetic focus, you can bring in your intuition. Not in a crystal ball kind of way, but you might say things like, “Hey Jayson, when you talk about your work this week, I notice there isn’t a lot of enthusiasm around your actions. What can I help with?”

If discovery listening means being present and not taking any words at face value, empathetic listening means you don’t take any pause, sound, tone, or emotion at face value. You notice it and get curious about it.

“Leaders Who Don’t Listen Are Soon Surrounded by Those who Don’t Speak” - Andy Stanley

The art of listening takes time to develop, but it can, and should, be practiced daily. It is especially useful in your one-on-one meetings, when negotiating or persuading others. Done well, it builds trust and greater understanding. In a customer service role, listening and understanding is imperative to building and maintaining relationships.

Listening is a critical keystone input that will enable you to do so much more as a leader. But your focus has to be right. To be a more effective listener and leader, you have to learn to self-manage your heavy reliance on competitive listening and shift the focus to discovery listening. When people feel listened to, they feel like you care about them, which causes a release of dopamine and oxytocin. As an empathetic listener, you will become a more resonant leader and will have much better data to work with. Discovery and empathetic listening are essential inputs that affect the expression of your culture.

If you’re like most, you are probably reflecting on where you spend most of your focus. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter. What matters more is what you do with this new and important information. What you do in your next interaction is far more important than what you’ve done in the past. The past, you can’t control. The next conversation is what will make the biggest difference in whether you are working with garbage or working with the rich resources that come with being present, curious, and empathetic.

Listening is one of the numerous things we explore and exercise in our award-winning Accelerated Leader Programs. Elevate your impact and engage with the struggle of becoming a better, more meaningful leader. Make next year the best year of your professional career by saving your spot in one of our upcoming programs.