Your team members often know about problems, opportunities, and customer issues long before you do, and you won’t find out if you don’t make the effort to listen. But listening is only half the story – the way you do it sends a strong message about how much you value their opinions.
As a leader, what are you doing to understand what’s truly going on in your workplace – and especially to listen to your team members? They often know things you should know, and you would know if you listened to them.
I was in beautiful Phuket in Thailand last week, speaking at a conference for a large franchise retail group in Australia. I was talking about leading people through change, because like many organisations, they’re facing a lot of change now, and want their franchise partners to know how to lead their people through change.
After my presentation, a participant told me a story about one of the franchisees – an amazing story about how this leader listens to her people.
Every Friday, they open the store to customer 15 minutes late. That 15 minutes is for her and her staff, and she askes,
“What sort of things have come up in the last week?”
Sometimes they’re positive things worthy of praise, and sometimes her team members tell her problems she doesn’t know about. By airing them in this short meeting, she – and other team members – learn about them, and can figure out as a group how to address them.
This is an excellent idea – for two reasons.
First, the obvious benefit is she’s listening to her team members, who are closer to operations and customer than she is. Every leader and manager should take a leaf out of her book, because you team members know things you don’t know – and you wouldn’t know if you didn’t listen.
But I think the second reason is more important – it’s the signal and message she’s sending to her team. She’s explicitly willing to give up 15 minutes of valuable revenue-earning time to listen. In effect, she’s saying:
“I care so much about your opinion I’m willing to sacrifice some of my revenue and profit to listen to you.”
It’s a simple thing, and some team members won’t even realise. But they would realise if she asked them to come in early or stay late – on their own time.
What are YOU doing for your team to demonstrate you care about their opinion?
And then, do you actually listen to them?
For more, join my free public online presentation “Keep The Change” soon, where I talk about building an adaptable team. Register here, and invite others in your team and your network as well.
