An Impact podcast with Greg Bartlett, created for the Impact leadership playbook.
How good are your listening skills? We might assume that listening is an innate human ability, but in reality it's a skill that must be cultivated. And often what we think counts as listening isn't listening at all. It's hearing another person while thinking about something else, looking over their shoulder, or waiting for them to finish so we can speak. Deep, active listening is a vital skill for leaders to develop.
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In this mini podcast (25 mins), created exclusively for the Impact leadership playbook, Dan chats to Greg Bartlett about listening. Based in Sydney, Greg is a Senior Consultant at Impact Australia. With 18 years’ experience at Impact, he’s known for his warmth, resourcefulness, community-minded approach, and for being someone who really ‘walks the talk’ of leadership and learning, always sharing his growth and perspective shifts and role modelling these behaviours for others.
"If there were three skills to learn as a leader, listening has got to be one of them."
What role does deep, active listening play in the leadership toolkit?
"So if leadership is about inspiring people, getting the best out of people, getting outcomes through people at their best (and to me that is leadership) then deep listening, active listening is a must. It's a core skill, mindset, behaviour that allows you to really understand someone. Understand their perspective, where they're coming from, not judging yourself, not transposing your own thoughts, your own version of that, your own agenda, etc. It's an absolute core piece. If there were three skills to learn as a leader, listening has got to be one of them."
What top tips have you got for leaders looking to develop their listening skills?
"Put your distractions aside. Put the phone away. Be in a space where you can have the best chance of being very focused on what you're doing.
There are other things I think are important: timing, where you are yourself, your energy. Let’s say this is a planned conversation, you’ve got to go into it feeling ready, feeling like you're up for this, you've got the time for this. Otherwise it's just going to be a disaster. You're going to feel like you need to rush it. You're going to be thinking of the things you've got to do and not the moment you're in.
And by ‘energy’ I mean, is your energy positive? You're not having one of those days where you're tired, you're stressed, you don't really want to be talking to anyone. And I think that's really important […] At least give yourself the best chance of being able to succeed with this."
Is there anything leaders could do as a daily practice to further build their listening skills?
"How can you train your mind to stay focused on something? If that's not something that you're particularly skilful at, then you can practice any activity where you are singularly focused on something to the exclusion of everything else. The world of mindfulness will help, if you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, then there's easy things you can do. Next time you go for a walk, just try and look around… actually tuning into things that you haven't seen before. This can help you create more of a habit of being aware. Because I think if you're not aware and you're easily distracted, then listening deeply and actively is going to be a hard thing."
Listen to the podcast on Spotify
This mini podcast was created for our leadership playbook, an interactive resource capturing 45 years of learning about leadership.