Top Ten Ways to Be a Great Leader

Hans Finzel

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780781414838
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

Dr. Hans Finzel knows from personal experience the key success factors in every new leader's journey. He shows readers:

• The two most important words in a leader's vocabulary
• The skills a leader needs to communicate effectively
• Why today's effective leaders lead with vulnerability
• The contrast between servant leadership and slave leadership
• How to lead with both passion and humility
• The difference between making a mark and leaving a legacy

In this eminently practical book, new leaders in business, education, ministry, and the church will discover how to lead well and love what they do.

1

“L” Is for Listen and Learn

My friend Chuck works for a global aerospace firm in Southern California. He told me a crazy story recently about when his “big boss” came to town to fix some problems and “listen to the troops.” Chuck is in his early thirties and has to deal with some of the generational tension between his youthful team and baby boomer bosses. Chuck shared with me, “Our boss flew in from Saint Louis to have a big meeting with all of us on the team. He wanted to hear our concerns and learn what was causing problems in our production output. We spent all morning in a conference room with this gentleman, and—would you believe it?—every single issue we brought up he shot down with excuses. He blamed us and refused to listen to our concerns at all. It was like talking to a brick wall. He spent all morning rationalizing, making excuses, and belittling any legitimate concerns we brought up.”

I asked Chuck, “So how did that make you feel?” He said he and his colleagues left that meeting extremely discouraged, with their tails between their legs. “We wondered why that big boss bothered to fly out to see us. He did not listen to one word we said. He made us feel terrible. It makes us all want to quit and find a better place to work.”

I am always amazed to hear stories like this. Isn’t it crazy how many people get into top management positions who have no business being there? I am sure you have scratched your head a time or two, wondering how an incompetent person ever got promoted to that place of leadership.

I love the topic of leadership because leaders make things happen. Leaders affect all of us, whether we lead, follow, or try to stay out of the way. History is the story of leaders, good and bad, who have done amazing good and terrible evil. I have a passion to help people starting out in leadership get on the right track and avoid the awful mistakes that make life miserable for followers.

Think about the question I told you I ask audiences when I start my talks on leadership: “How many of you have ever worked for a terrible boss?” When I ask that “terrible boss” question, it is as if 90 percent of the audience raising their hands are saying, “If only you knew the half of it!” When I drill down into the stories of these folks and their experiences, I am amazed at how often the issue of listening comes up—or really, the lack of listening. “Our team leader is so arrogant—she just does not listen. She is the world’s expert on everything. I think she loves to hear herself talk!” I hear story after story of frustrated followers who wish they could be heard.

The problem of poor listening has increased dramatically in the last decade, particularly due to smartphones and the ubiquitous presence of the Internet and advertising. Now I even get attacked when I am filling up my car at the pump, with a little screen screaming advertisements at me. And social media addiction has taken distraction to a whole new level. Have you noticed that fewer people than ever really listen to you in the midst of all the disruption of technology? How do you feel when someone really does listen deeply to you? When we are really heard, we feel valued. I feel, in those rare moments, that my leader really does care about me.

Hardly any behavior hurts followers more than a leader who does not know how to listen.

If you are just starting out as a leader, this lesson is one of the most important you will hear from me. Hardly any behavior hurts followers more than a leader who does not know how to listen.

Two Ideas Joined at the Hip

The “L” in LEADERSHIP stands for two very important words: listen and learn. It has been my observation that one greatly affects the other. People who don’t do well with one generally don’t practice the other. If you are not willing to be a lifelong learner, why should you listen to great ideas from other people? Conversely, can you learn and grow without listening?

Great leaders know how to listen to their teams, and they are lifelong learners. People like to work with that kind of leader. Listening and learning are vital, and I want to unpack each skill separately. If you just work on these two skills, you are going to set a great foundation for your future leadership.

Learning to Listen

How good a listener would people around you say you are? I want you to think about your own listening skills. At the end of this chapter, I have an exercise for you that will help you find out how great or poor you are as a listener. For some people, listening comes naturally. But for many of us, it is a struggle. And even though we might be the leader, we’re not the only ones with a voice; we have to learn to listen to our team.

I want you to feel what followers like Chuck feel when they have to suffer under leaders who don’t listen. Here is my short list of the painful eight:

How do you feel if you are not listened to? I feel …

1. Unimportant.

2. Marginalized.

3. It’s a waste of time trying.

4. I am invisible.

5. My opinions are not respected.

6. I am not respected.

7. I have nothing to contribute.

8. Nothing is going to change.

I’m sure you can add to this list, but those points cover the most common reactions to leaders who don’t listen. Many of these relate to the idea of respect. Lack of respect is a huge issue in the workplace. Followers can tell whether the leader respects them by how well she listens. Kohei Goshi, former chairman of the Japan Productivity Center, once said, “It may be difficult to teach a person to respect another unless we can help people to see things from the other’s point of view.” ¹

Here’s what I’ve observed: most leaders love to talk. They enjoy listening to their own pearls of wisdom and great insights. “People should listen to me because I am the boss!” Sometimes they even begin to believe their own press. They only listen to positive feedback and things outsiders say about them. Outsiders who don’t work with them might think they are awesome, but those on the inside know better! If your leaders have this unrealistic view of themselves, they claim more and more authority as they believe they have less and less reason to listen to subordinates. One of the curses of leadership is being isolated at the top of the pile, the king of the mountain.

Have you ever noticed that there’s much more horizontal communication in an organization than vertical? Coworkers talk often with one another about all sorts of things, but the communication between those coworkers and their superiors is much less frequent and tends to be a lot more formal.

The book of James has great advice for all of us: “You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (James 1:19 NLT). It’s interesting—as I talk to so many followers and employees who feel stuck in miserable jobs, I often dig down into what it is about their boss that really frustrates them. It’s amazing how often I hear the words, “Our boss just doesn’t listen to us. It is always one-way communication.” We should really all listen to the book of James.

I have been flying Southwest Airlines a lot lately. Southwest has a refreshing culture that is different from most airlines, some of which don’t seem to care about their customers. The culture at Southwest was set by the founder, Herb Kelleher. He listened to his troops, and he was passionate about empowering people at the “bottom” of the company: flight attendants and gate agents. When you talk to a gate agent at Southwest, he actually listens to you. When you call Southwest’s customer service, they really seem to care. They solve your problems without having to go up the chain of command for permission. Responding to the needs of the people you work with communicates that you really care about them.

The more people you lead, the more you have to listen, but the harder it becomes. Effective leadership has more to do with listening than with talking, because through listening—and we’ll see this as you read on—you gain more wisdom and insight. If you listen to the people in the trenches and rely on their information, you will make better decisions. Chuck’s boss lost a great opportunity to improve their company because he refused to accept constructive input. Sadly, he learned nothing new on that trip—he missed out on information that could have greatly helped their company.

A lot of leaders get stuck in isolation because they are at the top of a large organization and lose touch with the front lines. Whether it’s people to whom you’re ministering, people to whom you’re providing a service, or people to whom you’re selling things, you have to learn that the end user is king. It is for that person’s sake that you do what you do. The higher you go in leadership, the more you’re isolated and insulated from those people on the front lines. That’s one of the biggest reasons you have to learn to listen to your people. Herb Kelleher never forgot this powerful principle, even when Southwest Airlines grew to be the largest domestic carrier of people in North America.

The higher you go in leadership, the more you’re isolated and insulated from those people on the front lines.

For twenty years, I served as CEO of a global nonprofit. I know what it is like to have too many demands from too many people. When we start out in leadership, we might just have one or two people looking to us to lead them. But what if we are wildly successful? What if we get promoted? Or what if our team grows, and before we know it, we have dozens of people expecting us to be an example of a caring leader? What will happen if our team grows to an organization of hundreds? This is a great problem to have, but it brings its own problems with it!

Say you are successful and you have more and more people reporting to you. You get a big promotion. Your team is growing. Or say you just got a new job with direct reports for the first time. Maybe your church or ministry is growing and you are hiring staff for the first time. As you embark on this journey of leading more and more people, you will face huge new challenges. The list that follows unpacks some leadership growing pains that make it hard to listen to everyone as your span of control grows.

Why It’s Tough for Busy Leaders to Listen

Too little time. The more people you lead, the less time you have for each person. And, of course, the more demands each of them has of you. “Wow,” you might think to yourself, “I used to have a lot more time for me before I got this te...