How do people shift from being a manager or supervisor into becoming a leader? - part #3

Here are two important questions you need to ask yourself as a leader:

- What are we talking about in our weekly meetings other than COVID-19 related stuff?

- What is the ratio between internal issues, reports, problem solving and external market place issues?

First, people who successfully make the shift from manger or supervisor to leader know one thing. They need to listen to their customers, clients, members, guests, etc. Whatever is the name you choose to describe the person you serve, we need to make them the focus of all we do. Furthermore, we need to dig deeply into the following set of questions with them:

- How are you doing during COVID-19?

- What’s going on in your neighborhood? Your community?

- How are we doing as an organization in serving you?

The challenge for us as leaders is to get our head into the market place more than just into the supply chain. If we are vision led and mission driven as a company, the customer is the focus of all we do. We are creating solutions for them, not just for the supply chain.

Second, we need to listen to the front line employees. They are the ones who interact with the customer on a daily basis. And with these important people, we need to ask the following questions:

- How are you doing during COVID-19?

- What’s going on in your team? Your division?

- How are we doing as leaders?

Hal Gregersen in his article called “Bursting the CEO Bubble: Why Executives Should Talk Less and Ask More Questions” in the March - April 2017 issue of the Harvard Business Review, writes that leaders need to be “uncharacteristically quiet”. This goal is “.. to increase your chances of encountering novel ideas and information and discerning weak signals: being quiet.” We need to understand that this is not normal leader behavior. Normally we are in send mode, broadcasting information in all directions. We want to answer the question rather than ask the question. We want to inspire people rather than be inspired by people. We want to explain things to people rather than listen to explanations. 

Being quiet as a leader is to switch into receiving mode. Our challenge is to “Ask questions. Don’t tell.” The hardest part of listening is to learn not to fill the space with comments. Instead, we need to embrace the power of the pause and listen.

This week practice asking more questions and being uncharacteristically quiet. You will learn a great deal if you do this on a regular basis.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257