Chief Listening Officer👂🏼
Listening is the most important skill a leader can develop
If you want to know the priorities of an organization, look at the newest positions they create not just in the organization itself, but in the C-Suite. For example, in the last few years we’ve seen the trend of Chief Wellness Officer for companies that prioritize the wellness of their staff. Chief of Remote focuses on strategically building out a strong decentralized team. Another trend to watch is the position of Chief Listening Officer.
For many companies, this is a position that is externally focused on listening to audiences and customers. It makes sense in a world full of content shared via multitudinous platforms, one person at the company needs to be aware what’s being said about their brand.
But what about internal audiences? Listening to employees and each other is just as important as listening to your marketplace. The Chief Listening Officer position can also pay attention to what internal stakeholders are thinking and feeling about the organization’s health.
A Chief Listening Officer is tasked with not just hearing what’s being said, but truly listening and then offering solutions that will guide leadership. It’s a crucial role in that leaders often lose touch with what their teams are experiencing on a day-to-day basis and need a reality check on what’s truly occurring within the organization.
The key is to not just hear, but to actively listen. Active listening means setting aside judgement; it’s listening to genuinely understand. It’s an essential coaching skill that anyone can learn and master.
This article from Asana captures the essence of active listening and how to practice it:
Listen without judgement
Listen without interrupting
Paraphrase and summarize
Model positive nonverbal behavior
Ask specific, open-ended questions
Each of us can become a Chief Listening Officer, regardless of our actual role. Practicing the coaching skill of active listening—listening to genuinely understand—can transform the way we think, the way we understand, and the way we interact. As the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus sagely observed, “We have two ears and one mouth, so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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