In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen argues that listening is the most under‑recognized yet essential leadership skill. She explains why poor listening erodes trust and respect, and highlights moments when effective listening is critical—such as gathering vital information, handling strong emotions, ensuring you’re understood, addressing employee concerns, and especially when you disagree with the speaker. Andersen offers three concrete practices: (1) give your full, undivided attention (no multitasking, focus mentally as well as physically); (2) restate the speaker’s core message in your own words to close the loop; and (3) ask curious, open‑ended questions that explore the speaker’s thinking rather than seeking simple facts. Through a role‑play with colleague Salla, she demonstrates how restating and questioning deepen understanding, build respect, and surface new ideas. The episode cites Warren Buffett and Winston Churchill as exemplars of leaders who value listening, and directs listeners to ProteusLeader.com/listening for further resources.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello and welcome to the Proteus Leader Show. I'm thrilled as always to have this chance to connect with you. Now today, I thought I'd talk to you about what I think is the most underrecognized leadership skill. Have you ever noticed how some people barrel into a room and everybody immediately realizes they've arrived while others kind of slip in quietly? Leadership capabilities are like that too. For instance, if a leader is good at articulating a compelling vision for the future, that tends to be something that everybody notices. And if a leader can give a stirring motivational speech to get everyone lined up around a common goal, that skill will get noticed too. But what about when a leader is a world-class listener? That skill can slip right by us. And yet, in the work we've done with leaders over the years, we've observed that excellent listening is the subtle superpower of great leaders, that it's foundational to good leadership and management. Now, you may not immediately notice good listening when it is happening, but you will notice its absence. When people don't listen to us, we tend to feel underappreciated and marginalized. And we can think the person who's not listening is self-involved, closed-minded, even arrogant. Most important, when someone consistently fails to listen to us, especially when we're communicating something that we feel strongly about, it's hard for us to trust that person. Now it's starting to sound important, right?
Here's what one of my favorite all-time leaders, Warren Buffett, Even though we get told to listen all our lives by parents, teachers, bosses, even our children, as in, Mom, you're not listening to me, either we don't really think it's that big of a deal, or we think we're already doing it.
I'm here to say it is a big deal, and we're often not doing it, or not doing it very well. So let's get practical. Here are some simple ways to become a better listener. First, recognize that there are some key situations when it's most important for you to listen well. Here are some of the biggies: when you need to get critical information that you don't have, when people have strong feelings on a topic, when you need to make sure that you're being understood, when employees have come to you with an issue, And this is a big one. When you feel strongly about something, especially if you think you disagree with the person who's speaking. That's tough, right? So how do you listen in those situations? First, don't try to do something else at the same time. Come on, admit it. How many times have you been on the phone with someone who's speaking and you're saying, uh-huh, while you do something else? Or actually typing something on your computer or looking at your phone when an employee is in your office talking to you. Just stop it. A friend of mine once told me, you can't do 2 things at once if one of them is listening. And it's true. Multitasking while listening pretty much guarantees that you're not fully hearing what's being said. And it also feels disrespectful, especially when you do it face-to-face. Okay, so let's say you're actually focusing on the person speaking. Now what? It's not enough to simply focus physically. To be a great listener, you need to focus mentally as well. Often we think about other things while someone is speaking to us. Sadly, we're often just thinking about what we want to say next. Rather than listening, we're simply waiting for the other person to take a breath so we can talk. A great way to change this habit is to shift your goal. Rather than having your goal be to get your point across or impress the other person or show how smart you are or finish the conversation, make your goal to fully understand what the other person is trying to communicate. Doing that, I found, focuses my mind wonderfully, and I stop being distracted or thinking about what I want to say. If that sounds hard to do, I'm about to tell you something that will really help. In fact, what I'm about to tell you is the single most useful thing you can learn to do to become a great listener. Here it is: when the person speaking to you completes a thought, respond by summarizing briefly the essence of what he or she has said. Here's how that sounds.
Your colleague says, I'm worried that if we don't start capturing all this feedback we're getting from the millennials who are just starting to shop with us, we're not going to know how to update our product lines to be more appealing to them. And if we lose them, that's a problem. Even though the senior leadership may not see this yet, I do think they're the future of our business.
And you respond, having been really trying to understand the core of what she is saying. You're worried we're not focusing on giving our younger customers what they want, and you see that as a big threat to our success. And she will say, Yes, exactly. Because people aren't used to being listened to. So when you actually listen to them, they get excited. And all kinds of wonderful things have just happened. She's pleased and surprised that you actually listened to her. She'll feel respected. You both know that you really understood her point. And neither of you would have known that if you'd just said, I understand, or, right, or, good thought, Emily— all things you can say automatically without really having listened. We call this skill restating, and it really is magically useful. Not only does it close the loop between you and the person speaking, it sets you both up for a great what's next conversation. I want to share one other almost magical listening skill: questioning. We all ask questions of other people, but most of the questions we ask are intended to find out specific pieces of information that are interesting to us, like, where's the bathroom? What's for lunch? Or, when can you get me that report? If you want to be a world-class listener, ask curious questions. Curious questions generally don't have a right answer. They're questions you ask to find out what the other person thinks, feels, or knows.
Curious questions sound like this: How do you think we should approach this project? What might we be missing here? Why do you find that data most compelling? I wonder if we need a backup plan.
Imagine asking an employee one of those questions. And then just being quiet while he or she answers. I suspect you'd find out a lot about how that person thinks, about whether he or she is seeing a situation differently than you, ideas that person might have that you wouldn't have thought of. And your employee will feel heard, included, respected, and at the same time, you'll be teaching him or her to think more deeply and independently. So, over the next few days, try the 3 things I've mentioned here: focus your attention on the person who's speaking, restate the essence of their important messages, and ask curious questions. I think you'll get tremendous benefits out of these few shifts in your listening behavior: more useful information, better relationships, new insights, happier and more productive and thoughtful employees. I'll end with another great quote, this one from Winston Churchill.
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
I love that. And if you want more insights into how to make listening one of your leadership superpowers, Go to ProteusLeader.com/listening. And before I go, I want to thank my colleague, Salla, for being the other voice in the podcast. So thanks for being here with me today. As always, have a great life and let's talk again soon.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, join us at ProteusLeader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
