351 My Boss Isn't Listening

f you reading this title and thinking “this has nothing to do with my leadership”, you might want to think again. We hear this comment a lot from the participants in our training. They complain that the boss doesn’t talk to them enough because they are too busy, don’t have much interest in their ideas or do not seek their suggestions. In this modern life, none of these issues from staff should be surprising. There have been two major tectonic plate shifts in organisations over the last twenty years. One has been the compression of many organisational layers into a few. The other has been the democratization of information access. Bosses have been struggling to keep up.

When we had more layers in our company structures, leaders matured like a fine wine. They rose up the ladder in small increments, over an extended period of time and were groomed for responsibility. There were assistants aplenty to do mundane, time consuming tasks. The striping out of the layers, for the sake of cost cutting and “efficiencies”, has thrown this world off its axis.

The fewer layers means the jumps are larger, the responsibilities greater and no assistants. Boss busyness has resulted in less subordinate coaching and delegation getting done. Explanations have been replaced with directives – “do this, do that”. Bosses don’t delegate much anymore, because they are time poor. They don’t have the bandwidth to explain, so they say to themselves, “it will be quicker if I do it myself”. Does this scenario sound familiar at all?

The internet has made information instantly available and free. Boss monopolisation of information is not as easy or replicable as in the past. The amount of information emerging everyday has become a massive flood tide against which resistance is useless. Bosses cannot be in command of its entirety, so they have to rely on others much more than before. They need their subordinate’s help, but the sting in the tail is that they are not doing enough about accessing that help.

Subordinates have good information, get ideas, are closer to the market, collect the most up to date experience and produce insights. Harassed time poor bosses have no time to seek out these ideas and bring these insights out into the open. They don’t create the time required to coach. They do delegation, but in a way guaranteed to fail, because they won’t invest the time to sell the delegation.

The consequence is that subordinates hesitate to engage with their boss, because they see how distracted and frantic they are already. When they do talk to the boss, it is all formulistic around reporting on progress on the various projects being worked on. Bosses don’t bother to enquire about the other key things going on in their subordinates lives. They fail to seek ideas and innovations because they are already preoccupied with their own work. They hover between distracted and selective listening. On a slow day, they might stray into the zone of attentive listening, but that would be a rarity in a year long period.

In fact, bosses tend to excel at pretending to be listening, because they are brilliant at multi-tasking. They are mentally fixated on something else, while they are talking to their subordinates on a completely different topic. Does this ring a bell? They are listening for key items which will be of interest to them and they are tossing out everything else. The subordinate doesn’t feel they are actually being listened to at all. They don’t feel it is attentive listening, let alone empathetic listening. They draw the conclusion that their actual perceived worth and value to the boss is pretty low. They get discouraged and soon just stop inputting ideas into the system.

If you have not been hit up with an idea from one of your subordinates in the last month, take a moment and reflect on exactly when was the last time that happened? The chances are it has been a long time between drinks. The reason is probably that you are not really engaging with the team and making sure they feel they are being listened to. They need to know that their ideas have value, that you are recognising their contribution. They want to see their ideas being put into application. Are you doing this? Are you really listening?

I was invited to an English Speech contest for Middle School students. The students must have home grown skills and are not eligible to compete if they have spent more than six months abroad, in an English speaking environment. This was pretty grand affair. The organisation running it is run by students at university, who took part in the contest themselves when they were in Middle School. Many of the graduates become business patrons and supporters as they work their way up in their business careers. It a perfect Japanese storm. Japan loves uniforms and the organising body had that covered and Japan loves formality and there was plenty of that on display too. There were some significant lessons on offer for presenters as well.

One of the sponsoring countries had their Ambassador there to present a prize and give a speech. Extolling the virtues of his country and its educational opportunities for these keen students of English is a natural fit. What wasn’t so natural was that he had to read his speech. I have been a diplomat, yet I see this time and time again - Ambassadors who are poor public speakers. Anyone in that position, for that type of occasion who has to read his speech, qualifies as a poor pubic speaker in my book.

By contrast Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado gave a splendid speech, alternating between English and Japanese. She wasn’t reading it, the content was relevant and interesting. When you are a member of the Imperial family there is tremendous expectation on you and she could have chosen the safe route and have read her speech. Yet, she gave her remarks without notes and spoke freely. It was so much more powerful and connected with her audience. The toast was given by a senior Government official, who did so in excellent English and without any notes either. The only one who couldn’t give his speech without reading it, was the one native speaker involved. Rather ironic I thought.

Then we had the three finalists give their talks. Of course they had memorised their speeches. As Middle School students living in Japan it would be unlikely they would be able to do anything less. A five minute speech is a long time to memorise a speech, but they all did it brilliantly. If the Japanese education system does one thing well, it is rote memorisation. The final speech was given by the winner and it was very surprising. Also surprisingly, the three finalists were all boys, where normally this is an area of education where girls usually do better.

The English pronunciation of the finalist was certainly not as good as the second and third place winners. You would think that would disqualify him for winning but it didn’t for a number of very important reasons. When he started speaking I was thinking that his pronunciation wasn’t so good, so how did he manage to win? What followed was a winning combination of factors. We can learn a lot from a fifteen year old Middle School student from the backblocks of Wakayama Prefecture.

His theme was about him trying to improve his poor pronunciation which was congruent with who he was. In other words he was being authentic and appropriate in the eyes of his audience and so he could connect with them. The other boys told stories too but this boy included dialogue with his grandmother in his recounting of his story and this added that additional element of drawing us into the action. When he spoke he did something more than the other contestants.

He spoke with his whole being. The other two finalists with better English pronunciation used their voices, some small gestures and some facial expressions in their talks. The winner however was speaking with his whole body language lined up behind his words. He was moving in a relaxed way that was congruent with his message. He sounded more natural, even though it was a totally canned speech. He wasn’t the best English speaker in the contest, but he was the best communicator in English. That difference is huge. I found the same thing with my Japanese. I started by worrying about linguistic perfection but discovered it didn't matter. Even if my vocabulary was limited, my pronunciation unreliable and my grammar garbled, the audience came with me into my story, when I delivered it the right way.

As adults, in business, we can decide to avoid reading our speeches at all costs. Thinking about our audience when we craft our talk is critical. In the delivery, we should be authentic. That means we don’t worry about occasionally mispronouncing words or stumbling over phrases. We are focused in our delivery on bringing our total body language, our passion, to the subject. We don’t get hung up on perfection, because we are focused on communication. If we do that, then we will be successful in getting our messages across.