Critical Listening Bibliography Excerpt: Part 3

You can read part one here to learn about this project and the central thesis.

Burnison, G. (2010). Listen, Learn - and Then Lead. Businessweek.Com, 2.

Leadership is widely discussed but hard to define. The 6th President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, said that you are a leader if “your actions inspire others to dream more, lean more, do more, and become more.” Purpose is to discover fundamental truths about leadership by interviewing dozens of leaders around the world (the president of a sovereign nation, global Fortune 500 CEOS to the richest man in the world). A consensus among all the leaders studied said that everything boils down to listening, learning, and then leading.

Importance of listening

Listening is an acquired art and requires strategy from the listener to find facts and gather intelligence from the important people you communicate with. Not taking the time to listen closes the leader’s mind, not just his ears. One story told included a retired chairman of Xerox Corp (XOX) and how she met with employees to explain the company’s plan to avoid bankruptcy and to hear their fears (layoffs), concerns, ideas, and desires to restore the company. She turned the company around. The followers and the mission is more important than that leader. How you are viewed by them, letting them see “into your soul”, and having a transparency and connection starts with listening.

Always learning

Search for new ideas and insights, others looking to innovate, and even more people seeking to connect. Lifelong learners with insatiable curiosity--newspapers, resources.

Real leadership is about authenticity, compassion, and genuine development of the people that you are leading. Focus should always be on the team and organization as well as helping others feel sufficient in order to achieve amazing feats. Leaders must be servants to its company, brand, and people, and recognize that they work together on a vision, mission, and values that leave a great legacy.

Evaluation

The study was published in 2010, but the issues are still the same. It was objective--it summarized the advice that several powerful leaders had given and left out unneeded information. The study was not scholarly, but for his own curiosity to be shared with others. Gary Burnison is the Korn/Ferry Chief Executive Officer; therefore, he has a background in leadership. The article was specific to two skills needed to be an effective listener.

The article fits into my thesis because it shows how listening can be important in large-scale groups like student activities. When in a crisis, communicating with everyone involved and sharing a connection is important. Making sure that everyone involved understands how to move forward, that their concerns are important, how to voice those, and that they are being applied to the outcomes is vital to creating a community.

#Leadership #AdvisingSupporting