Why Leaders Fail: The Listening Mistake That Starts With You
My name is Adam Melnyk, leadership coach and owner of The Momentum Coach. And today I’m going to teach you why I guarantee you you are going to fail. Earlier this week, I was talking with a client. And this client was very distraught with me. Well, not really with me, but with their job. So, they’re a manager.
They’ve recently gone to management and they’ve been given a very difficult team to manage. and their team did a performance review of the manager or I should say an engagement score, a companywide engagement profile that they sent out to all the team members and it came back that our team is not engaged at all out of a score of 100. 100 being amazing. The team came out and they said, “Hey, I’m 20% engaged.” Which is really bad for my client because they’re sitting there going, “My team is disengaged. My team is upset.
This report is going to upper management and upper management is going to see this and it’s going to come back on to me and I am screwed. They were panicking. They didn’t know what to do. And in conversation with them it is very clear that they were going to be fired unless they started listening because they were not listening to their team.
The Leadership Problem Edmonton Managers Overlook
It was this interesting dynamic. So when I talked with her, she said, “When I talk with my team, they tell me I’m an amazing manager. They love me. They want me there.” They talked about how the previous manager was terrible. They hated them. And now I’m here and they’re so happy I’m here. And yet at the same time, they gave me this low engagement score. And I said, “Yes.” The first question I had was how many team members actually you know filled out this engagement score and she said about 80% of the team filled it out. I said that’s interesting.
The first question you need to ask is what about the other 20%. They didn’t fill out that engagement score. What is not being said? Why didn’t they fill it out? That’s a damn good question. For example, when I was working with one leader and they were talking about disgruntled or checked out employees, they were looking at individuals that filled out an engagement score and they filled it out quite low and they said, “We need to get these people off the bus cuz they’re disengaged.”
I’m like, “No, the really disengaged people don’t give two shits about your survey. They don’t fill it out. They don’t fill it out at all because they don’t care about the company. You could fail as an organization and they would just move on. Or you could succeed as an organization and in which case they still have the same job. They are completely disengaged. They will never fill out your survey. So that 20% is very interesting to me.
Anytime someone’s ever come up to me and said, “Hey, I’ve done a survey.” My first question is, “How many people filled out your survey? What is the engagement looking like? Why didn’t they fill out your survey?” That’s a big question. There’s one organization side tangent that they sent out an engagement survey and they had only 40% of their colleagues or of the workers fill it out saying if they were engaged or not. Then the question becomes, okay, 60% of your workforce didn’t fill out the survey.
Why? That’s a big question. We’re going back to my client. So 80% of her team filled this out. There’s the 20% that didn’t. It’s something of interest, but we’ll pin that question there.
Listening Levels Every Edmonton Leader Must Understand
The next question is what is not being said? And this is where I start teaching her about the listening levels. And I tell you guys, you have to know your listening levels. So the problem with this manager and why if she doesn’t smarten up, she’s going to get fired is because she was listening at a level one listening, which is all about me. She says, “I’m a great manager. I’ve been doing so much for my team. I’m trying to engage them. It’s my job that I’m worried about.
“Me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me. “
When I asked her, it’s like, so what is your team saying? And she would say, I think my team is saying da da da da da da da. And it’s like, okay, I see where the disconnect is happening. The issue that you’re seeing is you are not listening. You’re hearing too much noise and you’re not putting on your listening ears. You’re not cutting through the crap.
And so I start asking questions, asking her, okay, I know that’s what you think. What do they think? What do they want out of this? Why are they disengaged? What would engage them more?
And start doing a frame shift cuz I needed her to get out of this level one listening, which is all about I, into this level two listening, which is all about you. Okay, you filled out the engagement score. Why did you fill it out? What made you want to fill it out? What made you want to give a low percentage? What is the reason why you’re still at this company even though you gave a low engagement score? Now we’re starting to listen.
What Disengaged Teams Are Really Saying
Now it’s no longer about me. It’s about them. It’s about you. It’s about understanding why you did what you did.
For example, if my client said, “I feel so frustrated. I feel upset. I feel almost betrayed and that’s a stopping point because at level two listening it’s like you use that word betray that means something to you what does it mean to you and to come back to my client in her view she felt like this is was a betrayal because her team was telling her she was doing such a great job but she got such a low score which could affect her work and she might get fired but that’s not necessarily true. It might not be a betrayal.
And so asking the questions, we started getting to a level two listening, which is okay, there’s telling you this. What would make them want to give a low engagement score? And she started thinking and she came back and she said, well, they’ve been disgruntled with how the company is being run at the high level, at the seniorship level. They’ve been telling people time and time again how much work that they’ve been having, the burnout that they’ve been experiencing, and how they feel underappreciated.
She says that her team has been going out of their way to try to tell everybody how awful the working conditions are and she recognizes the working conditions are rough, but she feels hamstrung because there’s only so much you can do as a mid-tier manager. That’s important. So, I have heard this, but I feel like there’s nothing I can do. Well, her team understands this. So, what are they trying to do? They’re trying to shout to the upper echelons of leadership, hey, these working conditions are not okay.
These working conditions need to improve. If they don’t improve, we will continue to get disgruntled and we may move on. So now we’re in level two listening and she starts clicking. She goes, “Oh, I never thought about it that way.” Like, “Right.” So now we can start working on this problem together because now we’re seeing the problem for what it is.
How Edmonton Leaders Can Fix This and Succeed
There’s another layer to this, which is the level three listening, which is what is not being said. Remember those 20% that did not engage at all? Here’s the question. What is not being said? They didn’t do the engagement survey. Why? Why didn’t they fill it out for us?
Here’s the next question. The 80% that did, what do they want? What is not being said? What’s not being said in this case is these people are still engaged. They still care about their job. They’re still showing up. They want to see the company improve. They want to do good at the company and they want to see everyone succeed. That’s what they want at level three listening. That’s what they want.
And so in talking with my client, this light bulb goes off in their head and they say, “Oh, this isn’t about me.” And I looked at them and I said, “Right, it’s not about you at all. This is about the company as a whole.”
And now the big question is, what does your team want from you? Now we’re getting into the meat and potatoes of it. And through our coaching session, she kind of came to the understanding that hey, what my team needs from me is one to acknowledge that things are rough, but also to advocate on a higher level continuously about working conditions, about pay, and about work load consistently to them in the hopes that it improves.
And she said to me, she says, “I this is what I should be doing. This is what I want to do, but what I’ve been doing in the past is just telling them that things will improve.” And I said to them, “Will they improve?” And she said, “No, because upper management doesn’t care.” Like, right?
So, the thing you need to understand is that your team is very smart. They have degrees. They have masters. They understand when you’re blowing smoke up their ass. And if you lie to them, I can guarantee you they will know because it doesn’t take a rocket science scientist to figure out when someone’s saying, “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll improve working conditions.” And then 6 months later, working conditions haven’t improved. Like, this isn’t rocket science, guys.
And she realized in that moment why she was screwing up and what she was doing wrong. So, what she was doing wrong was one, she was listening at a low level. She needed to start listening at level two and level three and understand that her team was disgruntled with upper management. And what she needed to do was start advocating one for her team, but also on top of that, she needed to start explaining to her team what is and is not possible, what can and can’t happen, but also try to alleviate the burden on her level the best that she can while being truthful and honest with her team members.
I know it sounds easier said I know it’s easier said than done but that’s what was going on and I see this many times with leaders they are not listening and because they are not listening at a higher level they are doomed to fail I knew one gentleman who he was middle management he kept going to his boss his boss kept screwing him over uh every time he went to his boss for feedback anytime he went to his boss for any type of help or mentorship, his boss would often flip it on to him and force him to come up with his own solutions, his own feedback.
Essentially very hands off management and this caused a big problem for him because he was not listening at a higher level. At a higher listening level, what was going on was this leader or his boss only cared about him. He did not care about my client at all. He only cared about his job getting paid and just moving up in the ranks in his work. He felt that if he helped out my client in any way, shape or form, if he provided him mentorship, provided him guidance, then that would give him responsibility in case something went sour or wrong, which meant that he could then not climb the corporate ladder. Very problematic.
But because my client wasn’t listening at a high listening level, they were assuming that this individual was just frustrating. They were out to get them, that they were trying to screw them over, that they had nefarious plans and ideas around them. And because they started thinking that way, they started acting out at work and started attacking their boss kind of indirectly, which led into a whole whackload of shenanigans that did not end well for my client.
When we took a step back and we truly looked at it, what was actually going on was again their boss, what they wanted to do was just protect their position. They wanted to get paid. They wanted to go home. They did not want to help out the people below them. They weren’t a true leader. And they were honestly incompetent. And if my client was just listening as opposed to just doing, then he would have figured this out and he could have taken plans and actions to mitigate what was going on and actually propel him higher within the corporate ranks.
Thankfully, in coaching, we were able to sort out that mess. And he eventually did learn tips, tricks, and strategies to kind of manage that incompetent manager. and then migrate towards somebody that would actually help him out at his job. So when it comes back to it, if you want to succeed at anything, you have to learn to listen. If you do not listen, if you’re not listening appropriately, I guarantee you, you are doomed to fail. So the key takeaway is, always listen at a higher listening level.
If you’re a manager struggling in your position, or maybe you’re an individual who just wants to be a leader in your life, feel free to reach out to myself and join my free complimentary coaching session where we’ll sit down and identify what are your goals, where do you want to go, and grow you into the person that you need to be to accomplish them. And if you like this video, please like, subscribe, and share it with a friend who could use this information. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video. Cheers.