The Courage to Listen

It takes a truly confident leader to admit what they don’t know — and a brave one to ask their subordinates what they really think.

A telling anecdote about the kind of leader Bob Stiller wanted to be comes early in his recent book about how he grew a small Vermont business into Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. When the company was young, he became aware that his employees were working with a set of unwritten rules referred to as CBS — shorthand for “’cuz Bob says” — based on offhand comments he had made. He saw that as a problem: “I wanted people who were close to the work to figure out how to do it better. … I wanted people to think for themselves — not just tell me what I wanted to hear.”

Stiller is proof that a leader who doesn’t control every decision or claim to have all the answers can grow a company that is both financially successful and lauded for its ethical choices. When I interviewed him recently, he explained how Green Mountain built a strong sense of community by inviting employees at all levels to join strategic problem-solving sessions. (See more on this in the Radar section that follows.) Participating in that work built a culture of respect and cultivated people’s leadership skills: Instead of cultivating rule followers, the company grew innovators who weren’t afraid to say what they thought.

Professor and author Jim Detert is known for his writing on how to be courageous at work — in particular, how to be unafraid to say what you think needs to be said. But it’s not just that employees need the courage to speak up: Leaders need the courage to listen to often uncomfortable truths. Detert, whose first column for us appears in this issue, makes a strong case for getting the “undiscussables” out on the table. Leaders need to break through the tacit understanding of what can’t be said by creating a culture, with appropriate mechanisms in place, where people feel that they have permission to speak up about tough topics.

And here’s the thing: Leaders who like those unwritten rules, who don’t want to be challenged, are ultimately undermined if they won’t confront the truths that workers close to the business can speak to. Especially in times of extreme uncertainty and change, as Sanyin Siang points out on our closing page, your ability to make good decisions depends on having a complete picture of your context, which only a diverse set of perspectives can provide.

That’s also why we need to redefine another one of those perks of leadership: influence. Influence that is primarily rooted in persuasive power won’t lead to optimal decisions, contend Jonathan Hughes, Jessica Wadd, and Ashley Hetrick, authors of “Why Influence Is a Two-Way Street.” Instead, leaders need to model and lead thoughtful debates that surface multiple points of view, not so that one perspective can win the day but so that everyone gains a deeper understanding of the issues and can collectively explore solutions.

Ultimately, leaders still have to make the hard decisions. But if they are willing to dig deep and listen well, those will be wiser decisions.

“The MIT Sloan Management Review is a research-based magazine and digital platform for business executives published at the MIT Sloan School of Management.”

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