communication department

By David Farbey, Senior Member

While I enjoyed reading Suzanna Laurent's article "Team Conflict Is Natural," in the last edition of Tieline, I felt that there was another aspect of leadership that's just as important as knowing how to resolve conflicts. That is knowing when and how to listen.

Listening as a Leadership Skill

In a recent article on the CIO Magazine website, commentator Diann Daniel wrote about the importance of leaders cultivating their listening skills. It shows respect for the people who report to you, improves morale, and can lead to greater efficiency. Daniel also pointed out that listening is one of the crucial habits for success in Steven Covey's bestselling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Writing for Business Week, communications coach Carmine Gallo agrees on the importance of listening for business leaders: "Today's employee wants to be asked for feedback and he wants to be heard." These business commentators regard listening as crucial to the success of a business leader and advise business leaders to listen seriously to their staff.

What's true for bosses and their employees is even truer for leaders in voluntary membership organizations and the volunteers who contribute to their teams. If we are leading a chapter or a SIG or a Society-level committee and one of our members raises an issue, we need to listen very carefully to what they have to say. If we don't listen to our volunteers, they will feel unhappy and resentful. Unlike paid employees who often have no alternative but to hold on to a job even if they feel disrespected, our volunteers have no need to stick around if we make them unhappy. They will just leave.

But that's not all. Disgruntled employees may be reluctant to make negative comments in public about former employers as that may have an impact on their career prospects. Disgruntled volunteers have no need to hesitate.

Learning from Everyone

Listening is about more than simply making people feel valued and putting an end to complaints. It's also about learning.

There's a very famous statement in the Talmud, the central commentary on Jewish Law, which says "mi-kol talmidai hiskalti." Loosely translated, this means "All my students have taught me something." Not "all my teachers have taught me something," which is obvious, as we all expect to learn from our teachers. The famous phrase points out that the people we teach, and the volunteers we lead, all have different viewpoints, different insights, and ask different questions. There is a wealth of knowledge to be gained by listening to questions and comments from everyone we work with, particularly those who are also willing to give up their free time to support an organization we are all proud of.

Maybe I'm Wrong

While Suzanna's article reported some useful techniques for resolving conflicts, I'd like to add one more. We shouldn't be above a bit of introspection and humility when someone challenges our views. If someone on your team objects to something you want to do, it never hurts to think to yourself "maybe I'm wrong."

Some leaders may be proud of making some people unhappy (because "you can't please everyone all the time"). In contrast, we should prefer to work through cooperation and consensus. If we can't even persuade the volunteers on our own committee (at whichever level we operate) that the changes we want to introduce are really necessary, then maybe they're not.

Listening and Learning Builds Better Teams

The message for leaders in voluntary groups is that no one owes us their time or their effort. When members volunteer, we must show our gratitude for their contribution by treating them with respect. Listening attentively when they have something to say is the least we can do, even when what they are saying is critical of our actions or our plans. In fact, their criticism is what merits the most attention and thought.

This is not just about listening to placate people who may be angry or upset. By listening to others we can also learn from their experiences and their expertise, which may be very different from our own. The more we learn from each other, the better we can lead our voluntary organization.

Personal relationships built on mutual respect and mutual trust are the lifeblood of voluntary organizations like ours. None of us can successfully run a chapter or a SIG or any other group on our own-and we all know sad stories of people who have tried to go it alone and have failed, with dismal consequences for the Society and for themselves.

To be successful, we need successful and committed teams of volunteers. One way to build those teams is to ensure that all volunteers know how much their contribution matters, and to achieve that we must all know how to listen to, and learn from, everyone who wants to tell us something.

David Farbey is a Senior Member of the UK Chapter.