The Power of Listening to Managers and Team Members

Originally published 12 August 2023

In business, where we spend so much time looking at data, trends and performance, I think we sometimes overlook one of the simplest tools available to us.

Listening.

I've been asked before, "How did you identify a problem when no one else had?"

My answer is often quite simple:

The team knew, but no one was listening.

Information and data are important. They help us understand processes, programmes and trends and give us somewhere to start. But they rarely give us the whole picture.

For that, I believe you need to step away from the desk and go to where the work actually happens.

After all, who knows the job better than the people doing the job?

Going to Where the Work Happens

Spending time in the workplace gives you something that reports and dashboards cannot. You see the daily challenges, the interactions between people and the small adaptations that keep work moving.

More importantly, you get the opportunity to talk to people about them.

A significant part of my standard work when visiting a site is Safety Observation. But for me, observation isn't simply about watching someone work, ticking boxes and making judgements.

I want to listen.

That means talking to managers, supervisors and team members and understanding what they are experiencing. Every level of an organisation sees something slightly different, and every perspective can add another part of the picture.

Listening to people also demonstrates that their knowledge and experience matter. When you go to where the work happens and ask genuine questions, you often discover things that would never appear in a report.

You see challenges as they develop. You hear about the workarounds people have created. You begin to understand where the difference lies between how work was planned and how it is actually being done.

That knowledge can be invaluable when trying to solve problems or improve the way an organisation works.

From Listening to Action

Listening only has value if we do something with what we hear.

Understanding the reality of the work allows us to develop solutions that address the actual problem rather than the problem we assumed existed.

It also means the people doing the work can become part of the solution.

When managers and team members are included in conversations about problems and improvements, we benefit from their knowledge and experience. At the same time, those conversations help build relationships between people who might otherwise only interact through reports, meetings or organisational structures.

That can strengthen communication, cooperation and ultimately the quality of the decisions we make.

But there is a trap.

The Trap

Some leadership teams don't necessarily want to hear what people are telling them.

Taking an issue from the shop floor to senior stakeholders can mean delivering unwelcome news.

And when that happens, I think it's worth asking a fairly obvious question.

If the organisation already had a strong culture of active listening, would the issue have remained hidden long enough for someone else to discover it?

Perhaps the people closest to the work already knew.

The problem wasn't necessarily a lack of information.

It was that nobody was listening to it.

The Takeaway

We live and work in an increasingly virtual world, and there are enormous benefits to that. But I still don't believe there is a substitute for spending time with people where the work actually happens.

Listening isn't simply about acquiring information. It helps us understand the reality behind the information.

So the next time you find yourself buried in reports, analysing trends or trying to understand a red flag, it might be worth stepping away from the screen.

Go and talk to the people doing the work.

They may already know the answer.