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CHAPTER 9: LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION 269
kind of transformation is what leader listening—indeed, communication—is all
about.
Active listening is a daily, ongoing part of a leader’s communication. The
connection between personal satisfaction and being listened to,
whether one is a customer or an employee, is not a mystery. We
As a leader, you can learn to be a better
all know that few things are as maddening as not being listened Action Memo
to, whether we’re talking to a doctor, a sales clerk, a partner, listener. You can focus your total attention
a customer service representative, a parent, or our boss. When on what the other person is saying and
people sense that they have been heard, they simply feel better. work hard to listen—use eye contact; ask
Dr. Robert Buckman, a cancer specialist who teaches other doc- questions and paraphrase the message; and
tors, as well as businesspeople, how to break bad news, says you
have to start by listening. “The trust that you build just by letting offer positive feedback.
26
people say what they feel is incredible,” Buckman says. In the busi-
ness world, customers are often infuriated when their requests are
ignored or they are told they can’t be accommodated, signals that
nobody is listening to their needs. Furthermore, when leaders fail to listen to
employees, it sends the signal, “you don’t matter,” which decreases commitment
and motivation.

Discernment
One of the most rewarding kinds of listening involves discernment. By this kind of Discernment
Discernment
listening in which a leader
listening, a leader detects the unarticulated messages hidden below the surface listening in which a leader
detects unarticulated messages
detects unarticulated messages
of spoken interaction, complaints, behavior, and actions. A discerning leader pays hidden below the surface of
hidden below the surface of
attention to patterns and relationships underlying the organization and those it spoken interaction
spoken interaction
serves.
Companies such as Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble that live or die
on new products have discovered the importance of discernment. Customers are
frequently unable to articulate to market researchers exactly what they want, but
some companies have become experts at discerning unspoken desires. For ex-
ample, in an effort to discover what customers really value, Procter & Gamble re-
cently sent researchers into women’s homes to chart their emotional reactions to
home hair coloring. They found that people get a huge psychological boost from
dying their hair but a corresponding downslide when the color fades and roots
start to show. Yet most women put off coloring because of the time and hassle of
the process. P&G introduced Clairol’s Nice & Easy Root Touch-Up, which allows
people to do an easy, 10-minute stop-gap application, as well as introduced new
formulas that cling to the hair but take less time and effort. The new products are
sliding off the shelves. 27
Effective communication with followers also depends on discernment. One
leader dealing with a problem employee in the kitchen at an upscale restaurant
got nowhere by asking outright why her sous chef had gone from consistently
good performance to frequently being tardy or absent. After several days working
almost full-time in the kitchen and keeping her eyes and ears open, the restaurant
manager discerned that the quiet, introverted employee felt insecure and inad-
equate since a new head chef with a fl amboyant personality had been hired. With
this understanding, she got the two employees together and was able to solve the
problem. As another example, leaders who are trying to implement major changes
frequently have to use discernment to detect problems or deep-seated reasons for
employee resistance. CEO Aylwin B. Lewis is applying discernment in his efforts
to lead a turnaround at Sears Holdings Corp., which was formed from the recent
merger of Kmart and Sears Roebuck & Co.