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June 12th, 2008
HR to Top Management: Shut Up and Listen
You’ll be happy to know that there’s more to top executives than lavish perks and getting grossly overpaid. Now we’re finding out that they don’t know when to just shut up and listen.
A survey of 2,500 North American HR executives released this week by Boston-based consulting firm Novations Group found that at many companies, top executives spend too much time talking to employees and not enough time listening to them.
“Of survey respondents who have an opinion on the issue, 44 percent said management speaks too much,” Novations reported, while a majority (53 percent) said it gets the right balance between speaking and listening. But here’s the kicker: Only 3 percent—yes, that’s a miserly 3 percent—feel senior management spends too much time listening to employees.
“HR executives have a unique perspective on what’s going on within an organization, what employees really think and how the leadership team is perceived,” Novations director of consulting Jan Thibodeau said in a press release. “So here’s an insight into whether top management communicates effectively or not. The findings tell us management gets it wrong at two out of five companies.”
And this is why top executives should make nearly 350 times what the average employee does? Maybe the Center on Executive Compensation and others that argue that CEO pay levels are perfectly appropriate should take a look at this survey.
According to Thibodeau, management often assumes that listening is a natural skill. “In large, complex organizations listening is neither a simple task, nor does it come naturally,” she said in the release. “Leaders have to learn to listen with purpose, with sensitivity to certain words and language, and with attention to underlying meaning. But in too many cases what should be a genuine dialogue becomes just a monologue.”
At a time when employee engagement is so crucial, management needs to foster a culture that values open dialogue, Thibodeau said. “This is particularly key with Gen Y employees who placed a high value on an interactive work environment.”
These are all good points, and more reasons why executive pay should be handled more along the lines of what Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has called for. And it is even more proof that Ernest Hemingway had it right when he said, “I have learned a great deal from listening. Most people never listen.”
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top executive spend too much time talking to employees and not enough time listening to them
Also breaking news: 100% of people find that water is wet.
Posted by: Laurie Ruettimann | June 12th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Well, Duh!
Posted by: Fred in IT | June 13th, 2008 at 10:44 am
After working with client organizations around the world, I’ve found one universal truth that’s at the core of engagement: People will tolerate the conclusions of their leadership, but they’ll ultimately act on their own. The only way they will change their conclusions is through an authentic give-and-take process of critical thinking. This includes dialogue with peers and leaders.
Instead of letting people “solve the puzzle,” most leaders prefer to concoct the strategy, package it, and then market it to their people with the hope and belief that they will act on it. 99 of 99 times (let’s avoid the 100% norm), this doesn’t work. At the very core of human nature is a desire to solve our own problems. We don’t want somebody else to tell us the answers! I’m pretty sure that 99 out of 99 people (well, maybe one or two fewer) refuse to look at the back of a crossword or sudoku book for the answers or read the last chapter of a James Patterson novel before they read the book. If they did that, what’s the point of engaging in the puzzle or the adventure story? The experience of solving problems and participating in a rigorous journey is why people buy the New York Times, sudoku books, and best-selling novels.
But leaders don’t get this. They continue to give their people the answer key, and then they don’t understand why their employees aren’t as excited about executing a strategy that they had no part in helping to craft.
Listening is a weak cousin to the pursuit of curiosity. Listening can be very passive. But if you want to engage people in your organization, you have to know what they’re curious about - in the marketplace, in your strategic response to it, and in how they can contribute. This takes listening to the next level, into a purposeful leadership pursuit that is at the core of how to be relevant to employees and engage their hearts and minds.
At the core of all this is leaders’ inability to remember what it was like not to know. It’s forgetting the energy and excitement that came from comparing, contrasting, learning, unlearning, and coming to conclusions. If we deprive people of that, there’s no way they can get as excited about the business or strategy as leaders do.
Posted by: Jim Haudan | June 17th, 2008 at 10:39 am