why employees don’t listen

Ever wonder why your employees don’t listen to you? Or for that matter, why your teenager gives you a deaf ear?

Before you blame them for not listening to you, recognize this — the single biggest reason employees don’t listen is because they don’t really understand what you’re saying or asking.

Most of us are ineffective as communicators because we’re limited by our perspective — Yes, we know what we want, we understand what we need done. But we are blind to the reality that our employees don’t have the benefit of our knowledge and experience — and so, most likely, they aren’t familiar with the phrases and terminology we use when we talk to our peers or to ourselves.

Here’s a stark example:

The CEO of Nokia sent a memo to all employees, rallying them to wake up to the crisis at Nokia. He talked, among other things, about ecosystems — lamenting that their competition has created ecosystems, but Nokia hasn’t. You can read the memo here.

Listen to this from the employees’ point of view — “Ecosystem? What’s that? What does it mean? How do you go about creating it? What’s involved? Who must get involved? How will we know when we have it? I better shut up and not ask in case I appear foolish (I’ve already been blamed for missing the boat with it).”

When a leader uses such language, it leads to frustration at all levels — frustration among employees because they know they must change something, but they’re not sure what. And frustration for the leaders because they know employees aren’t listening, but they can’t figure out why.

But that’s just the beginning of the organization’s problems.

Because a limited perspective in one area is typically indicative of a limited perspective in every other aspect of business. A leader who is so disconnected from employees is invariably also out of touch with customers, with the marketplace, with opportunities, with looming problems — and, quite frankly, with how to create a competitive ecosystem.

Time to graduate to Skills 2.0.

Aman
(Aman Motwane)