Evolving digital technology demands more communication and accessibility from all employees, which leads to a culture of multi-tasking. But as leaders face increased communication demands, it’s important that they retain the value of listening.
Listening is Getting More Difficult
Active listening has been identified as one of the ten attributes of embodied leadership. Effective listening by leaders has been noted as the first step in creating trust within organizations. Also research shows that supervisor listening contributes to employee job satisfaction, satisfaction with the supervisor, and fosters a strong and beneficial exchange between leaders and team members.
Yet according to Accenture’s #ListenLearnLead study of 3,600 business professionals across 30 countries, the vast majority of professionals (64%) feel that listening has become more difficult in today’s workplace.
While nearly all (96%) of global professionals judged themselves to be “good listeners”, nearly all (98%) also report multi-tasking at least part of the day.
The study found that eight in ten respondents said they multi-task on conference calls with work emails (66%), instant messaging (35%), personal emails (34%), social media (22%) and reading news and entertainment (21%). In fact, professionals report distracted listening and divided attention unless they are held directly and visibly responsible within the context of the meeting.
“Digital is changing everything, including the ways in which we communicate. In turn, the way we communicate is changing how we listen, learn and lead in the workplace,” says Nellie Berroro, Managing Director, Global Inclusion & Diversity at Accenture. “Today, truly listening means not just watching our nonverbal cues in face-to-face meetings, but also maintaining our focus on conference calls, staying present, and resisting the urge to multi-task with instant messages and texts.”
Multi-Tasking Means More Quantity, But Less Quality
The attraction to multi-tasking seems to be a double-edged sword in the workplace that pins quantity against quality.
In Accenture’s study, 64% of Millennials, 54% of Gen Xers, and 49% of Baby Boomers reported multi-tasking during at least half of their work day. While 66% of professionals agreed multi-tasking enables them to get more done at work, 36% report that distractions prevent them from doing their best work. Millennials were at the extreme on each – feeling multi-tasking meant getting more done (73%) and yet distractions prevented them from doing their best work (41%).
However it’s traditional interruptions imposed by others (telephone calls & unscheduled meetings & visitors) rather than technology that were reported as most disruptive, perhaps due to the lack of control over these distractions.
What suffers? The trade-offs reported include decreased focus, lower-quality work, and diminished team relationships. But can leaders afford these trade-offs, too?
Despite the Benefits, Are Leaders Too Accessible?
“Our survey found technology both helps and hinders effective leadership,” says Borrero. On the positive side, 58% of survey respondents saw technology as a benefit for leaders enabling them to communicate quickly with their teams, allowing both time and geographic flexibility (47%) as well as accessibility (46%).
However, 62% of women and 54% of men felt technology made leaders over-stretched by being too accessible. 50% of respondents felt it forced multi-tasking and 40% felt it distracted from culture and relationship building. 55% felt a top challenge for leaders is information overload.
Borrero recommends practicing discipline when needed in disengaging from other technologies to give full focus to the material in front of you, such as putting your mobile device on silent during phone conferences and actively noting key points. “When you face information overload,” she says, “become comfortable with turning off technology. For example, you might disconnect at night, so you can recharge, and decide not to look at your phone until the morning.”
Importantly, when it comes to effective leadership and overcoming barriers to it, focusing on quality of communication and connection matters most – and that may very well start with listening.
The most important leadership attributes identified by the study were the “soft skills” of effective communication (55%), ability to manage change (47%), and ability to inspire others and ideas (45%), closely followed by understanding team members.
Yet this is also where skills suffer: the two most commonly perceived obstacles to effective team leadership were a lack of interpersonal skills (50%) and a lack of communication skills (44%).
Getting Better At Listening
While digital technology brings many advantages, leaders who compromise at listening may compromise their ability to lead effectively.
A Westminster Business School report highlights, “Listening is an essential skill in all situations and it is particularly important for leaders and managers to actually hear what others say, not simply what we think we hear them say…All great leadership starts with listening. That means listening with an open mind, heart and will. It means listening to what is being said as well as what isn’t being said.”
Despite its importance to leadership, leaders are too often ineffective at truly listening according to an HBR article by Christine M. Riordan. She notes, “The ability and willingness to listen with empathy is often what sets a leader apart.”
Riordan outlines three key behaviors leaders can practice that are linked with empathetic listening:
1) Hearing with all of your senses and acknowledging what you’ve heard.
This means “recognizing all verbal and nonverbal cues, including tone, facial expressions, and other body language.” It’s as much about listening to what is not said as what is said, and probing a bit deeper, as well as acknowledging others feelings or viewpoints and the act of sharing them.
2) Processing what is being shared and heard.
This means “understanding the meaning of the messages and keeping track of the (key) points of the conversation.” Effective leaders are able to capture and remember global themes, key messages, and points of agreement and disagreement.
3) Responding to and encouraging communication.
This means “assuring others that listening has occurred and encouraging communication to continue.” Acknowledging others verbally or non-verbally, asking clarifying questions, or paraphrasing reflects consideration of their input. This can also mean following-up to ensure others know listening has occurred.
According to Accenture’s Borrero, “Leaders are role models employees emulate, so it’s important for them to set a good example. In our increasingly hyper-connected digital workplace, we all need to practice ‘active listening,’ including paraphrasing, taking notes and asking questions. At Accenture, we offer a number of courses in effective listening, which is critical to our company as we focus on serving clients.”
In today’s leadership context, where effective leadership means showing social awareness not just self-awareness, leaders may employ technology to help them do it, but one way or another, it’s important they find a way to truly listen.
By Aimee Hansen
Voice of Experience: Carol Nelson, Regional Sales Executive and Seattle Market President, KeyBank
People, Voices of ExperienceShe left to become president and CEO of Cascade Bank, a community bank headquartered in nearby Everett, Wash., where she spent 10 years transforming it from a savings bank to a commercial bank, serving businesses as well as consumers. In fact, that is one of the professional achievements of which she is most proud. As she notes, changing culture can be challenging, and she found it extremely rewarding to make such a profound change and still be named the “No. 1 Medium-Size Business to Work For” by Washington CEO magazine in 2005. “That much change can be threatening, so the fact that we could also sustain and build morale was really meaningful.”
As Nelson has progressed throughout her career, she has learned the importance of building relationships. During the Cascade Bank transition, she learned that “if others in the organization understand and know you, they are more willing to accept your leadership and any changes you might need to introduce.” She also gained an appreciation for the power of process. “Giving participants the opportunity to buy in will increase the likelihood of success, whether it’s a single project or an overall company transformation.”
Nelson eventually orchestrated the sale of Cascade Bank to Opus Bank and, and following a period of transition, moved on to spend two years as agency director and CEO of the Department of Revenue for the State of Washington. “Having the chance to serve the public and give a portion of my life to public service was a tremendous opportunity, and I thoroughly enjoyed being a member of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet,” Nelson said.
Future of Banking is Bright
Banking called her back though, and she accepted her leadership role at KeyBank in January 2015. “I love being on a steep learning curve, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to bring my passion for diversity and leadership here to KeyBank,” she said. “I feel very fortunate that I found a career that I’m excited about and have a passion for – some people don’t ever find that and I’ve had it from the start.”
Nelson notes that it’s an exciting time in the industry. People have long predicted the rise of a purely cashless society, or the demise of branch banking as technology advances. But that’s not what her bank is experiencing – she says that customers still want the mix of touch points and so she will continue to lead efforts to deliver a broad cross section of products that can meet the needs of virtually every business and consumer.
“I don’t see that we will ever be able to harness technology to give people the sound advice and financial solutions that bankers do,”
Nelson finds banking to be an ideal career for women, due to the breadth and depth of the financial sector. She encourages women who are interested in career growth to seek a broad range of experience in multiple lines of business.
An Environment of Inclusivity
Though the career is particularly welcoming to women at the entry level, she has seen that as they continue to move up, it becomes more challenging and very competitive. “There are some stereotypes and management styles that can get in the way, but women just need to be smart about how they navigate them.” She notes a strong culture of advancement potential at Key in particular – it is led by a woman and women comprise 36 percent of the leadership team.
Since coming to KeyBank, Nelson has been appreciative of the networking group structure the bank offers. Employees are encouraged to form smaller networking groups where shared interests and backgrounds reinforce employee engagement and a sense of belonging. Current groups bring together Asian Americans, African Americans, employees with disabilities and employees of military families.
There is also a robust Key4Women group that supports the advancement of business women of all levels through networking and professional development events. Nelson says the program got her attention long before she came to the bank because it served employees as well as clients. “Our bankers are passionate about making sure women business owners have access to capital,” she said, adding that since 2005, KeyBank has lent more than $6 billion to women-owned businesses.
Giving Back
Nelson encourages women who want to become leaders to develop their skills by being active in the community early on. “Helping a nonprofit translates into valuable work experience and great connections,” Nelson said.
Her philosophy of giving back has created a mentoring mindset. “I believe that women leaders need to help other emerging women leaders advance their careers in the community,” she says. “Whenever someone asks for some of my time, I try to make it work. Someone paid it forward for me, and I want to do the same for others.”
At the same time, she notes that all senior women have to make savvy use of their time. Which is one reason she is such a believer in volunteer work and its ability to accomplish simultaneous goals.
Nelson is active in the Washington Roundtable, which focuses on economic development. “I am passionate about contributing to a thriving economy. At the Roundtable, I’m networking with peers and serving a mission while being visible on behalf of the bank. Time is finite – I really believe you have to be laser focused with how you spend it.”
She also serves as a trustee to Seattle University, where she is a double alum, and says she is energized by visiting the campus and interacting with the students.
And in her off time she participates in CrossFit – she is a certified instructor and while she doesn’t currently teach, she exercises her right to fitness with thrice-weekly sessions.
By Cathie Ericson
Navigating Primary Breadwinner Status: How to Rock the Boardroom and the House
Guest ContributionDespite our successes, women continue to face cultural and career challenges as we rise through the corporate ranks. Equal pay remains an issue even at the highest tiers of the corporate ladder, with a recent study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research showing that female CEOs still earn just 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn.
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Accountability, Leadership Responsibility, and Common Sense: Leaders Share What Makes Diversity Initiatives Work
Career Advice, NewsHonorees at this year’s Catalyst Awards Conference shared their companies’ secrets to success in increasing the percentage of women in leadership levels and throughout their companies’ workforces. The winning programs at Chevron Corporation and Proctor & Gamble combined three tried and true ingredients for advancing women at work: accountability, common sense, and leaders who took personal responsibility for improving diversity and inclusion at their companies.
“How we are behaving in any interaction speaks louder than any company effort,” said Melody Boone Meyer, president of Chevron Asia Pacific Exploration and Production Company. “Your behavior is how people read what’s real or not. The communication is there, but much more important is whether you’re living that.”
At the conference in March, Meyer, along with Mike Wirth, executive vice president of downstream and chemicals at Chevron; William P. Gipson, chief diversity officer and senior vice president of research and development at Proctor & Gamble; and Colleen Jay, president of global hair care and color at Proctor & Gamble, took to the stage to describe not only how their companies changed their approach to improving gender diversity, but also their personal journeys with taking responsibility for diversity as well.
As Meyer said, “Leaders need to live it.”
Accountability
Leaders from both companies detailed how they were held accountable for meeting corporate gender diversity goals.
Wirth explained that, at Chevron, leaders have to answer for their diversity action plans as part of their performance reviews. He also described an exercise the company’s CEO had leaders undertake: “The CEO said I want you to go out and spend time with three people who are very different from you and I expect you to respond,” he recalled.
“Accountability is nothing unless you have goals,” Gipson agreed. “Targets change everything.”
Proctor & Gamble ties diversity goals to executives’ stock options, he said. But the goals aren’t easy to meet and they aren’t merely window dressing to placate investors who care about diversity – they’re stretch goals.
“To really move the needle, you need to have some stretching,” Gipson said.
Indeed, Wirth commented, Chevron even employed reverse inventives at one point. “If you didn’t make progress, the bonus would be affected for everyone in that group,” he said, explaining that Chevron’s leaders wanted to make sure executives understood that diversity was a shared responsibility.
Common Sense
Diversity initiatives wouldn’t work without a heavy dose of common sense, as well. For example, Gipson explained that a few years ago, leaders at Proctor & Gamble realized women were leaving the company at a disproportionate rate. The company undertook a workforce survey to figure out why.
One of the reasons, P&G discovered, was that the company’s flex work program just wasn’t working. Offering employees the ability to work flexibly is one way companies can help their entire workforce meet their personal responsibilities. Since women as a group bear the brunt of child- and elder-care disproportionately compared to men, flex programs have been identified as a way for companies to retain female employees.
It turned out, Gipson said, that P&G’s flexible work program wasn’t flexible enough.
“We were trying to mandate when and where to work flexibly, but life is not really that way,” he explained. The company amended its program based on the survey results.
Leadership Responsibility
Finally, the panelists described what is possibly the most important part of an effective gender diversity initiative. Leaders have to internalize the value of diversity and demonstrate that value in their personal actions.
For example, Johnson said she and other P&G executives help each other keep track of blind spots.
“We help keep everyone sharp so we can role model that going forward,” she explained.
Similarly, Wirth described how he had to face his own personal blind spots a few years ago when Chevron undertook a dramatic restructuring. He picked all white men to lead his new team.
“I got a lot of feedback from the CEO, my kids, and women in my organization,” he said. “I had to do a lot of reflection on myself. I genuinely believed I had the right beliefs and behavior, but that’s not good enough. People need to see action.”
He continued, “As a white male, I’ve got an extra responsibility to catalyze the discussion [on diversity], and create an environment where everyone is supported and everyone understands the expectations.”
Gipson described how, as an R&D executive, he had to learn to “embrace the soft stuff.”
“It’s the hardest stuff,” he said. “But no matter how much progress we’ve made, we can always get better.”
That attitude – that we can always get better – is an important one in diversity and inclusion. Simply meeting the numbers isn’t good enough. True inclusion will require everyone in the workforce – especially leaders – to keep pushing themselves harder to identify and change their own personal weaknesses when it comes to diversity and working to change their companies for the better.
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
Movers & Shakers: Barbara Edwards, Counsel, Shearman & Sterling
Movers and Shakers, PeopleOriginally from Guyana, Edwards was the first member of her family to emigrate to the U.S. She attended Brooklyn College, and when she started was a bit uncertain of her future plans. But all that changed when she experienced what could only be described as a political re-awakening while protesting the New York city-wide public university tuition hikes and participating in the anti-apartheid college movement. That got her thinking about a career in law and in particular, impact litigation. The rest, as they say, is history.
Except that the road to success was not easy. Prior to college, Edwards worked as a live-in nanny and housekeeper. This experience, she says, often goes uncited when discussing her path to becoming counsel, but the skills she acquired during this time have been incredibly helpful both professionally and personally.
“Working as a live-in reinforced the value of hard work and demanding hours, helping to hone skills of flexibility and adaptability to effectively navigate the needs of different constituencies. I believe these are all skills which underpin my success as a lawyer and in particular my strong client management skills,” Edwards said.
Giving & Receiving
Throughout her career at Shearman & Sterling, Edwards has been a mentor to a multitude of associates, a role which she considers very important. She takes pride and pleasure in helping others learn, grow, and progress in their careers. Many of these mentoring relationships have been informal and her biggest challenge, she says, has been ensuring that she’s striking the right balance of being professional mentor and coach, “therapist” and friend to her mentees.
“Investing in people makes my work so vibrant, but I have to be intentional in how I approach it. It’s important to make sure the help you provide is translating to both professional and personal growth,” she said. While Edwards doesn’t seek out recognition for the support she provides to colleagues and especially younger lawyers, she likes to tell the story about the time when a group of women she worked with, all from diverse backgrounds and religions, entered her office around Christmas to thank her for her time, guidance and the significant impact that she had on their work experience, giving her a gift card to designer shoe store Manolo Blahnik. It is a memory that will always resonate with her.
“I love shoes, but it wasn’t just about the shoes,” Edwards recalled. “It was a profound moment for me because I felt that my efforts had really made a meaningful difference to these women. There’s no replacing that feeling.”
Edwards has also given back on the pro bono side, working with women – often minority women – on initiatives related to economic empowerment. Most notably, she represented the women founders of Harlem Lanes, the first bowling alley in Harlem in 30 years and the only one in the country to be built and owned by Black women. The project was one of the William J. Clinton Foundation Urban Initiatives and the former president attended the ribbon-cutting.
Shearman & Sterling’s global platform and pro bono strength intersect nicely with Edwards’ passion for traveling the world. She spent two years in the firm’s Singapore and Hong Kong offices, working across Asia, as well as a secondment with one of the firm’s clients in Germany. Edwards is also one of the few counsel and partners at Shearman & Sterling who has participated in the firm’s work for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a partnership that the firm has had for over 14 years. She traveled to Arusha, Tanzania for a one-month externship at the ICTR. It was an experience she says was life-changing.
“The ICTR work is not abstract. It has real, tangible outcomes and I’m proud to have been a part of it and to have made a useful contribution.”
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Voice of Experience: Sanja Udovicic, Partner in Project Finance Group, Shearman & Sterling
People, Voices of ExperienceHer recent and ongoing work, for example, includes advising multilateral lending institutions and commercial banks on the financing of an upstream gas project in Uzbekistan, counseling the government of Croatia on their tendering of a concession for the operation of the Croatian toll road network and advising lenders on a power project in Indonesia which won a number of awards for its innovative financing structure.
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Voice of Experience: Donna M. Parisi, Partner and Head of the Asset Management Group, Shearman & Sterling LLP
People, Voices of ExperienceParisi’s practice deals globally with derivatives, structured products, securitization, capital markets and commodities, as well as regulatory, risk management, and compliance counseling. It is an area of great interest, and her advice is in high demand.
She explained, “My clients need help navigating complex regulations– especially in light of Dodd-Frank. We’re in a period of great change. There’s a lot happening out there.”
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Voice of Experience: Anna Chung, Counsel, Project Development & Finance, Shearman & Sterling
People, Voices of ExperienceA project finance lawyer, Chung’s practice focuses on power, LNG, oil and gas, and petrochemicals projects. She began her career at a leading Australian firm but left after a few years for Shearman & Sterling.
“To be honest, my career was not particularly planned out, but I’ve been fortunate in having opportunities come my way,” she explains. “I knew I wanted life experiences in cities beyond the city where I grew up, and with Shearman & Sterling, I’ve been able to work in our London and Shanghai offices and am currently working out of our Singapore office.”
While she works on projects throughout Asia, Chung says it has been particularly meaningful to be one of the firm’s leading lawyers serving clients in Korea. She has been doing joint pitches, coordinating marketing trips to Seoul and preparing business plans as the firm expands its client base in Korea.
“It’s meaningful for me as Korea is where I am originally from,” Chung explains. “Our global project finance practice is quite an integrated one, and from fairly early on in my career, I’ve worked with senior partners from different offices on projects involving Korean financial institutions or corporates.”
She adds, “Korea is increasingly an important market for us with Korean financial institutions and corporates so active in the international project finance scene. We have been investing in our Korean relationships for some time now and it’s rewarding that as a firm and individually, we are getting significant market recognition.”
Loving Your Job
Chung has had two professional role models during her career to date – partners Bill McCormack at Shearman & Sterling and Michael Harrison at Minter Ellison. According to Chung, they are recognised experts in their fields but the real reason is that despite “the pressures and demands that come with such busy practices and management roles,” they manage to have a great sense of humor, treat every person with respect and be dedicated to their family.
Just like her role models, Chung finds humor in difficult situations. Throughout her career as a lawyer she has learned that little details, such as the correct date of an overseas pitch, do matter.
“Sometimes errors can work in your favor,” she explains. “One of my partners at Shearman & Sterling still teases me for getting the date wrong for an overseas pitch for a $1.2bn project. We arrived at the client’s offices a week early but still managed to win the pitch.”
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Voice of Experience: Eliza Swann, Partner, Shearman & Sterling
Voices of Experience“I wanted to go to law school for as long as I can remember, but ending up on the M&A team at Shearman & Sterling was a bit of an accident. I had never considered a business transactional type of career,” Swann said.
It’s funny how things turn out. Swann, who became a partner at Shearman & Sterling in 2007 after eight years with the firm, works on domestic and cross-border deals. In recent years, she has worked on several of the highest-profile M&A transactions in the world, including last year’s acquisition by Liberty Global of Virgin Media in a $23.3 billion transaction.
As an associate just out of law school, Swann found herself on Shearman & Sterling’s M&A team, in large part because she had clerked for the Delaware Supreme Court. Because so many companies incorporate in Delaware (more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies are Delaware companies), it is a major venue for business law litigation, with a judiciary that is extremely sophisticated in reviewing corporate law issues. Swann’s clerkship gave her valuable insight into issues fundamental to a transactional practice.
“I was so lucky to have been offered the clerkship and accepted the position without realizing how truly interesting the work would be,” Swann said. “About halfway in, I decided that I wanted to work in a New York firm with a strong M&A practice. I got the job at Shearman & Sterling and have been interested every day since.”
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Voice of Experience: Sarita Mohapatra, Partner, PwC US
People, Voices of ExperienceSarita Mohapatra, a tax principal with PwC, talks often about how to balance family life and her busy client schedule.
She’s been with PwC since 2001, becoming a partner in 2010. She initially studied economics in India and after earning her MBA came to the United States. A PhD in Economics followed, and she realized she had a love for teaching and spent four years as a faculty member at Utah State University. She decided she wanted to get back to the corporate world and subsequently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, seeking a position in professional services that incorporated her background in applied economics. After briefly working at another firm, she joined PwC.
Her work remains constantly fascinating to her, particularly the technological advancements that seem to occur on a daily basis. With changes occurring globally related to transfer pricing and the intersection of economics and tax, she finds herself delving into new areas to identify solutions for her clients who are under lots of pressure to deal with regulatory compliance issues.
Don’t Make a Decision for Your Whole Life Based on Today
She worries that young women walk away from opportunities because they sometimes anticipate difficult situations than may never happen. She says that when she started, there weren’t many structured programs to help working moms. Even though she had no idea how to make it work, she knew she wanted to. She saw her male colleagues who have kids and still work, and she figured there was no reason why she couldn’t do the same.
“I learned that you can’t make a life decision based on the one problem ahead of you that day,” she says, citing child care coverage as an example of an issue that is transient in the big picture of your whole career.
Mohapatra says she took her clients into confidence early on, and set boundaries — for example, that two days of the week she had pick-up duties.
“I was fortunate that I had a lot of support and my colleagues and clients, both male and female, always supported me. Women wonder if it’s possible to have it all, so I try to talk to as many as I can to say, yes, it is possible. Even though everyone’s story will be different, this is how I did it. I really try to be a good role model for working moms because even though I had great support from my mentors, I wish I had more working moms as my role models when I was making those decisions.”
Speak Up To Get the Opportunities You Need
Mohapatra advises women to be outspoken and open about their aspirations. She says that while male candidates will routinely ask how long until they make partner, she’s found very few women will start a discussion to find out their prospects for career advancement potential.
“It’s not that they’re not ambitious — I see that drive and hunger — but they hold back,” she says. “I think they are concerned that I might think they are getting ahead of themselves. I coach my managers and staff constantly that if they want to advance, then they need to tell someone, because speaking up allows managers to give interested people the opportunity to acquire the skills and expertise they need.”
She says she focuses on this through her own experience – she had assumed everyone knew she wanted to make partner, so was surprised when she found out they didn’t. Someone asked if others knew, and she said “I think so! This is why I’m working this hard.” But she found out you can’t assume and went back to amend her career plan with long-term and short-term goals.
And the advice can translate for women she would consider her peers. She says that sometimes even at the higher levels, she still sees women will hold back in meetings and discussions.
She credits her viewpoints with her upbringing in India, when her parents would tell her that to succeed in the corporate sector in India without losing her identity she needed to be proud of who she is and what she brought to the table. “They would say, ‘We don’t want you to emulate men to be successful! Be yourself.’” Those words stick with her as she maintains her authenticity in her career.
Networking for Success
Mohapatra says that when she began in public accounting, there weren’t too many learning and development programs so she tried to build up her network naturally by participating in firm-sponsored events or organizing informal lunches or drinks.
“If I could, I would go back and cast my net a lot wider,” she says. “I tell my team to step outside their comfort zone from immediate coworkers and be more strategic about networking beyond those you meet organically.”
Mohapatra is very engaged in PwC’s Office of Diversity initiatives and recently gave the keynote address on the power of networking at the national convention of Ascend, a Pan-Asian organization with which she is involved locally and nationally.
Family Focus
Mohapatra remembers that one of her partners had suggested she network more outside of business hours, which seemed challenging in light of the many long hours she already put in. But she realized that many of her clients also had kids around the same age so she started planning events that included families. “I realized I had to incorporate both my life and work to make better use of the time I had.”
She carries that double-duty ethos into her community service outreach as well, helping in her son’s school and working with Habitat for Humanity, which she combines into a team-building activity with her staff.
When she’s not working, she enjoys gardening, a hobby that she and her family can do together.
Her family loves to travel, looking for areas off the beaten path to get a true flavor of the culture. Her son, who is 12, has already been to 13 countries. “When people ask him to tell a fun fact about himself he loves to say that he’s been to more countries than he is years old.”
By Cathie Ericson
Listening Is Getting Harder, but It’s Necessary for Leaders
Career Advice, LeadershipListening is Getting More Difficult
Active listening has been identified as one of the ten attributes of embodied leadership. Effective listening by leaders has been noted as the first step in creating trust within organizations. Also research shows that supervisor listening contributes to employee job satisfaction, satisfaction with the supervisor, and fosters a strong and beneficial exchange between leaders and team members.
Yet according to Accenture’s #ListenLearnLead study of 3,600 business professionals across 30 countries, the vast majority of professionals (64%) feel that listening has become more difficult in today’s workplace.
While nearly all (96%) of global professionals judged themselves to be “good listeners”, nearly all (98%) also report multi-tasking at least part of the day.
The study found that eight in ten respondents said they multi-task on conference calls with work emails (66%), instant messaging (35%), personal emails (34%), social media (22%) and reading news and entertainment (21%). In fact, professionals report distracted listening and divided attention unless they are held directly and visibly responsible within the context of the meeting.
“Digital is changing everything, including the ways in which we communicate. In turn, the way we communicate is changing how we listen, learn and lead in the workplace,” says Nellie Berroro, Managing Director, Global Inclusion & Diversity at Accenture. “Today, truly listening means not just watching our nonverbal cues in face-to-face meetings, but also maintaining our focus on conference calls, staying present, and resisting the urge to multi-task with instant messages and texts.”
Multi-Tasking Means More Quantity, But Less Quality
The attraction to multi-tasking seems to be a double-edged sword in the workplace that pins quantity against quality.
In Accenture’s study, 64% of Millennials, 54% of Gen Xers, and 49% of Baby Boomers reported multi-tasking during at least half of their work day. While 66% of professionals agreed multi-tasking enables them to get more done at work, 36% report that distractions prevent them from doing their best work. Millennials were at the extreme on each – feeling multi-tasking meant getting more done (73%) and yet distractions prevented them from doing their best work (41%).
However it’s traditional interruptions imposed by others (telephone calls & unscheduled meetings & visitors) rather than technology that were reported as most disruptive, perhaps due to the lack of control over these distractions.
What suffers? The trade-offs reported include decreased focus, lower-quality work, and diminished team relationships. But can leaders afford these trade-offs, too?
Despite the Benefits, Are Leaders Too Accessible?
“Our survey found technology both helps and hinders effective leadership,” says Borrero. On the positive side, 58% of survey respondents saw technology as a benefit for leaders enabling them to communicate quickly with their teams, allowing both time and geographic flexibility (47%) as well as accessibility (46%).
However, 62% of women and 54% of men felt technology made leaders over-stretched by being too accessible. 50% of respondents felt it forced multi-tasking and 40% felt it distracted from culture and relationship building. 55% felt a top challenge for leaders is information overload.
Borrero recommends practicing discipline when needed in disengaging from other technologies to give full focus to the material in front of you, such as putting your mobile device on silent during phone conferences and actively noting key points. “When you face information overload,” she says, “become comfortable with turning off technology. For example, you might disconnect at night, so you can recharge, and decide not to look at your phone until the morning.”
Importantly, when it comes to effective leadership and overcoming barriers to it, focusing on quality of communication and connection matters most – and that may very well start with listening.
The most important leadership attributes identified by the study were the “soft skills” of effective communication (55%), ability to manage change (47%), and ability to inspire others and ideas (45%), closely followed by understanding team members.
Yet this is also where skills suffer: the two most commonly perceived obstacles to effective team leadership were a lack of interpersonal skills (50%) and a lack of communication skills (44%).
Getting Better At Listening
While digital technology brings many advantages, leaders who compromise at listening may compromise their ability to lead effectively.
A Westminster Business School report highlights, “Listening is an essential skill in all situations and it is particularly important for leaders and managers to actually hear what others say, not simply what we think we hear them say…All great leadership starts with listening. That means listening with an open mind, heart and will. It means listening to what is being said as well as what isn’t being said.”
Despite its importance to leadership, leaders are too often ineffective at truly listening according to an HBR article by Christine M. Riordan. She notes, “The ability and willingness to listen with empathy is often what sets a leader apart.”
Riordan outlines three key behaviors leaders can practice that are linked with empathetic listening:
1) Hearing with all of your senses and acknowledging what you’ve heard.
This means “recognizing all verbal and nonverbal cues, including tone, facial expressions, and other body language.” It’s as much about listening to what is not said as what is said, and probing a bit deeper, as well as acknowledging others feelings or viewpoints and the act of sharing them.
2) Processing what is being shared and heard.
This means “understanding the meaning of the messages and keeping track of the (key) points of the conversation.” Effective leaders are able to capture and remember global themes, key messages, and points of agreement and disagreement.
3) Responding to and encouraging communication.
This means “assuring others that listening has occurred and encouraging communication to continue.” Acknowledging others verbally or non-verbally, asking clarifying questions, or paraphrasing reflects consideration of their input. This can also mean following-up to ensure others know listening has occurred.
According to Accenture’s Borrero, “Leaders are role models employees emulate, so it’s important for them to set a good example. In our increasingly hyper-connected digital workplace, we all need to practice ‘active listening,’ including paraphrasing, taking notes and asking questions. At Accenture, we offer a number of courses in effective listening, which is critical to our company as we focus on serving clients.”
In today’s leadership context, where effective leadership means showing social awareness not just self-awareness, leaders may employ technology to help them do it, but one way or another, it’s important they find a way to truly listen.
By Aimee Hansen