Learning Log 1

Managing Employees, Professionals and Teams

Option 3: Active Listening

Active listening, probably the most vital part of effective communication, is a person’s willingness and ability to hear and understand. It is a state of mind that involves paying full and careful attention to the other person, avoiding premature judgment, reflecting understanding, clarifying information, summarizing, and sharing as reflected in figure 1 in the appendix. By learning and committing to the skills and behaviors of active listening, leaders can become more effective listeners and, over time, improve their ability to lead. However, there are barriers to active listening such as the cultural image of leadership, lack of know-how, emotion and cultural differences that are summarized in figure 2 in the appendix (Hoppe, 2006). Active listening is part of demonstrating empathy which has been described as the emotional appreciation of another’s feelings. This involves recognizing the presence of a strong feeling, imagining the other person’s feelings, stating perception of and legitimizing these feelings, respecting the other person’s effort to cope with those feelings and offering support and partnership (Millington, 2008). Managers should recognize that words make up just 7% of effective communication, the other parts being tonality, body language and perception. A lot of people hear which is on the surface as opposed to listening which is much deeper and the latter is important since the ideal proportion of a person talking in a discussion is just 20% (Travel Trade Gazette, 2006). Active listening is critical across several domains. For example, the U.S. army has reported that practicing active listening can help save lives (U.S. Army, 2008). Similarly, companies engaged in brand building are increasingly focused on "active listening" of their customers (Coane, 2009). Research has pointed out that despite the time spent listening, people remember just upto a half of what is heard (Mindtools.com, 2009). The following is an episode that opened my eyes to the concept of active listening.

I was a member of the team that reviewed our Corporate Banking franchise in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E) in the spring of 1998. For this project, I reported into Mark who had overall responsibility for the review and Ashish, my administrative manager, who headed the operations portion of the review. During the course of my review, I noted that while the U.A.E branch’s biggest customer was sanctioned export financing for minerals and metals trading, the branch was financing the customer for trading in drugs and pharmaceuticals which the bank prohibited from financing by U.S. and local regulatory laws. Given the sensitive nature of these findings, I decided that it would not be appropriate to raise this issue at our daily team briefings and instead, I thought it more prudent to take Mark and Ashish into confidence. When we met, I was not even midway through presenting my evidence when Ashish launched a tirade against me and accused me of drawing wrong conclusions in order to further my impression management. When I looked to Mark for support, he refused to intervene and maintained a studied silence. Unknown to me, Ashish raised the issue with Moustafa, the Country Manager, over drinks that evening and assured him that he had things under control. Moustafa summoned me the next day and berated me using considerable vituperative and threatened to get me fired. Phil, our Division Head, pre-empted my whistle blowing through asking me to submit to the “wiser and more experienced minds in the business”. Ultimately, this issue did not feature in the report submitted to Executive Management and the Board of Directors. A few months later, our U.A.E franchise not only lost over $50 million in credit losses as the customer had shipped illegal drugs but also had its Corporate Bank license revoked. Consequently, the bank had to shut down our operations in the country and all employees including Moustafa were terminated. Our division conducted an internal enquiry into why this issue had not come to light and cautioned our team for our lack of teamwork and communication.

The ability to listen effectively is an essential component of leadership, and leaders need to know they need to be good listeners to be effective. Besides not showing good leadership, Ashish and Mark did not stop to gather information, demonstrate empathy, show respect and build any relationship with me (Hoppe, 2006). Neither Ashish nor Mark was present in the moment, never maintained eye contact and instead, they were in a hurry to leave for dinner. Maintaining eye contact is an important aspect of active listening as it makes the speaker feel that the listener is committed and caring (Sherman, 2009). This could be a power issue as research has indicated that the attribution of power increases through looking while speaking and decreases through looking while listening (Dovidio and Ellison, 1982). Ashish was frowning and had his hands clenched in a fist which showed me aggressive intent (Loo, 2009). Both of them did not hold their judgment and did not assure me that they had an open mind. There was absolutely no empathy and no willingness to understand my situation. On the contrary, both of them used judgmental body language and Ashish stated that “This finding can never be true” (Caproni, 2004, pp. 118 - 119).

Ashish and Mark did not practice the reflection, or reflective response technique, which is critical in that it elicits as much as possible of the speaker’s thoughts and especially feelings and is a way of helping the speaker explore their meanings. The idea behind reflecting back the speaker’s words and feelings is to respond rather than lead the conversation by interjecting ideas or suggestions that distract the speaker and to respond to the feelings rather than content (Yates, 2009). Neither Ashish nor Mark used any paraphrasing through the conversation. For example, either of them could have said something like “What I am hearing is...” or “I understand you feel this issue is critical”. Ashish also fell into the familiar trap of “knowing the answer” which means that the listener thinks that he or she knows what the speaker is saying before the latter completes saying it (Webb, 2006).

There were no probing, open-ended or clarifying questions whatsoever and there was no guidance from my superiors on what I should do next. Ashish and Mark did not realize that active listening is first about understanding and then about being understood. Instead, Ashish came out with his counter-arguments without waiting to hear the complete facts and focused about being understood first. The impact of poor listening exhibited on the part of Ashish, Mark and Moustafa was far-reaching. It made me feel that they were really hard to talk to, that they were not really interested in what I had to say, that I could not get a sentence through them without interruption and lastly, that anytime I said something, I was just going to get shot down (Hoppe, 2009).

There were several learnings that came to the fore during this episode. In hindsight, I realize that my communication was mired with considerable technicalities that made active listening difficult for Ashish, Mark and Moustafa. I did not exhibit much confidence being somewhat shaken at the magnitude of the finding and my superiors realized this fact (Study Guide and Strategies, 2009). In retrospect, I chose the wrong moment to communicate bad news. I had not provided a heads-up to either Ashish or Mark and they were taken in by surprise. Secondly, I chose the wrong time in the day to deliver the bad news when they had prior commitments (Page, 2009). Also, the entire team was grappling with several issues that day and the volatile and complex environment could have potentially hindered their ability to listen (Hoppe, 2009). I should have also enlisted Ashish’s support through first discussing the issue with him instead of bypassing him and raising the issue directly with Mark (Yeung, 2009). Ashish was also an ego-centric person and perhaps felt that agreeing with his subordinate’s critical finding would be a sign of weakness (Webb, 2006). Further, my communication style was “tell” which emphasizes control over the content and little audience involvement when I should used a style akin to “consult”which focuses on obtaining audience input and buy-in (Munter, 2003). Also, I could have desisted from using words such as “major deficiency”and “major issue” that triggered some red flags in the mind of Ashish and caused him to react strongly (Webb, 2006). When I discussed the issue with Moustafa, considering his emotional attachment to the business, I should have presented the facts and not pre-faced my conversation with conclusions. When people express strong feelings or opinions it may be tempting for the listener to react quickly or passionately, which is what Moustafa did (Hoppe, 2009). Also, I failed to consider the cultural differences when communicating with Moustafa who hails from Egypt, a country with considerable power distance (Cyborlink, 2009). Egyptians belong to a high-context culture where class standing is of importance and my directness could have been perceived by Moustafa as abrupt, demanding or intrusive and caused him to lose face.

My analysis of the above experience has reinforced in me the fact that it takes a lot of concentration and determination to be an active listener. One needs to be closed to other thoughts and behaviors and concentrate on the message with a goal to truly hear what the other person is saying. I have ample scope to improve my listening skills which could translate into productivity increases, fewer miscommunications and better relationships and improvements in my ability to persuade and negotiate. I also understand that good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness and through understanding my personal style of communication, I can go a long way towards creating good and lasting impressions with others (Mindtools.com). However, the greatest lesson that I learned from this episode is that leaders need not always have the answers, call the shots, and do all the talking all the time. On the contrary, the ability to be quiet and listen actively enhances leadership. As Thomas Hardy one said “A man’s silence is wonderful to listen”.

Option 5: Good Manager vs. Bad Manager

The role of managers is to create an environment where employees can perform their jobs to be best of their abilities and to help employees realize their potential. Managers need to realize that as they ascend up the corporate ladder, their subordinates are more technically equipped to perform better at their jobs than managers can (in the same jobs). The second truth is that managers need their subordinates more than the latter need the former (Fletcher, 2009). As one author said “Management is the art of arts as it is the organizer of talent” (Brown, 1983). Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism stated that “A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.” Mintzberg (2001)’s model in figure 3 shows that managers can process information in the hope that people can take action, work with people and encourage people to take action or take action directly. Managers can communicate, control, lead, link people through a network of contacts, do and deal / negotiate with outsiders. I have realized several management lessons in my career that has spanned for over 15 years and have summarized those lessons below:

Worst Manager

I held a senior position in the audit & risk management unit of a global financial services organization where the matrix structure meant that I reported to four managers - in Hong Kong, Tampa and London at a product-level and to an administrative manager in Mumbai who appraised my performance. Ashish, my administrative manager was an insecure, autocratic and an unethical person and was my worst ever manager. I reported to him for about 18 months after which I threatened to resign from the company if my reporting relationship were not changed due to his unethical and autocratic behavior. I would characterize Ashish as a Credit Grabber manager who would grab credit from his subordinates if things worked and blame them if things did not and a Pretender Manager who pretended to do what an ideal manager does but moved up the corporate ladder through a close relationship with the powers that be (Miguel, 2009)

My experiences with Ashish taught me that high-quality relationships are built on trust, respect and reciprocity (Caproni, 2004, p 213). Ashish demonstrated little integrity and would manifest several lies to his subordinates thinking that this would engender our loyalty to him while this actually worked to the contrary. For example, he told each of his direct reports that they were awarded the highest performance-based raise when the truth was that he had taken a lion’s share and had passed very little down the line. Ashish did not pay any attention to his subordinates’ feelings so long as this benefited him. For example, he called me one evening and told me that I needed to meet him early next morning to discuss something with serious consequences to me and refused to go into further detail. I had a sleepless night and next morning, to my surprise, I came to know that the company was awarding me a special bonus for my performance. Given what I had undergone the previous evening, I was livid and could not express my appreciation for the award. I learned that managers should realize that their behavior could potentially impact subordinates in different ways and simplistic interpretations of their behavior would not be always useful (Caproni, 2004, pp 218, 231).

Ashish had a counter dependent personality where he was dismissive of his authority and responsibility towards his employees and never ever guided his employees when they needed his support. Managers need to realize that that most of their subordinates are interdependent on authority which implies that subordinates consider authority figures to be trustworthy and dependable (Caproni, 2004, pp. 215 - 216). Successful leaders are cognitively and behaviorally complex and rather than using a single management style, they analyze problems from a variety of perspectives and determine the most appropriate management style for each occasion. Unfortunately, Ashish did not compare well with other leaders on either the Situational Leadership model or under the Denison Leadership Development model (Caproni, 2004, pp. 219 - 222). He had only one style of leadership, the delegating style which is low on both task and relationship orientation. Ashish was lucky in the sense that most professionals on the team were technically adept at carrying out their responsibility. Where Ashish failed was in ascertaining the willingness, confidence and motivation levels of individuals to execute their responsibility. His performance under the Denison Leadership Development model was extremely poor. First, he showed poor communication skills and never disseminated information and this left team members in the dark. Secondly, he did not promote consistency, had little time to involve employees and seldom tried to empower employees or build a team (Caproni, 2004, pp. 224 - 225). On the contrary, he tried to set one team member against the other through some disgraceful politics so that every team member would only have loyalty towards him. Employees found little clarity on roles, worked in an autocratic climate which bordered on a hostile environment at times, had little or no access to information and lacked sociopolitical support (Caproni, 2004, p 226).

As a manager, I should give credit to my subordinates for their work. Besides, I should strive to be professional and demonstrate empathy in my dealings with my team (Caproni, 2004, pp. 219 - 220). Unfortunately, Ashish did not hesitate to take credit for his subordinates’ work and put them down with such regularity that people stopped providing ideas that would have improved the organization. He showed a complete lack of empathy and believed that employees cannot be trusted. He criticized employees publicly, behaved in a condescending manner and intruded into his employees’ personal lives. Managers should lead by example and demonstrate the highest levels of integrity. Ashish failed here completely, misused office facilities and services for personal use and misappropriated company art for his home.