Listening Like a Leader

In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle noticed a striking pattern among the most effective teams he studied:

“Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.”

The best teams—and the best leaders—don’t dominate conversations. They listen deeply.

Listening is one of the easiest things you’ll ever do, and one of the hardest. Hearing requires little effort; truly listening requires humility, patience, and care. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The beginning of love for another person is learning to listen to them.”

Listening is one of the most powerful ways to fill the cups of those you lead because good listening is more than a skill. It’s an act of love.

Why Listening Matters

Leadership is about influence and relationship (not authority and control). Listening sits at the heart of both.

When we listen, we build trust. Listening generates safety, helping people feel valued and credible to contribute. That safety fuels contribution, which drives creativity, collaboration, and innovation. Ultimately, this leads to better outcomes in both work and life.

When we listen, we create engagement. People who can weigh in are far more likely to buy in. Listening moves teammates from feeling unimportant to feeling like they’re contributing to something important.

And, when we listen, we model our desired culture. Listening nurtures a culture of caring, curiosity, and intentionality. Over time, these behaviors become contagious.

Ultimately, leaders listen for two reasons:

1. To care. Good listening communicates, “You matter to me.”
2. To understand. Listening helps us see more clearly by gathering diverse perspectives and multiplying insight. As a result, we give better guidance and make better decisions. 

As Kim Scott reminds us in Radical Candor, great leaders don’t achieve results by telling people what to do, but by listening, learning, and persuading. Listening gives others space to lead and grow, creating shared ownership.

Good listening flows from a humble heart that counts others as more significant than ourselves. It’s more about affirmation than answers. Often, people don’t need advice—they just need to be heard.

What Listening Looks Like

Listening isn’t passive; it’s an active posture of presence and curiosity. Here are five ways we can put this into practice.

1. Physical Presence. Your body communicates more than your words.

• Maintain eye contact to signal attention.
• Put away distractions—close the laptop, silence your phone, and step away from the screen.
• Lean in slightly and orient your body toward the person speaking.

As author Geoffrey Tumlin reminds us, we should “listen like every sentence matters, talk like every word counts, and act like every interaction is important.”

2. Verbal Discipline. Good listeners talk less and think more before they speak.

• Use silence strategically. Don’t rush to fill pauses; silence often draws out the truth that’s just beneath the surface.
• Ask open-ended questions. Use “what” and “how” questions: “What’s your perspective?” “How do you see this?” “What else?”
• Paraphrase to confirm understanding. Try, “What I heard you say is…” or “It sounds like you’re saying…”

Todd Henry, in Herding Tigers, calls this the WAIT Principle—Why Am I Talking? The less we talk and the more we ask, the more trust we build.

3. Emotional Attunement. Listening is not just about words, it’s about emotions.

• Notice tone, pace, and posture. If a team member avoids eye contact or withdraws, pause and ask gently, “I noticed you got quiet. What’s on your mind?”
• Validate feelings without judgment. Say, “That sounds frustrating,” or “I can see how that would be hard.” As Brené Brown teaches, “No empathetic statement ever starts with ‘at least.’”
• Respond with empathy, not defense. You don’t have to agree to show understanding.

Poor listening rejects and diminishes. But good listening invites others to exist and to matter. It embraces and builds.

4. Cognitive Curiosity. Listening also requires intellectual humility.

• Seek to understand before being understood.
• Suspend assumptions and listen for nuance.
• Welcome dissent. Focus on getting to the right answer, not being right yourself.

David Marquet writes in Leadership Is Language, “Collaboration happens through the questions we ask. It requires that we admit we don’t have the whole picture.” Curiosity turns listening into learning. It’s the difference between waiting to speak and being eager to understand.

5. Follow-Through. The real test of listening is what happens after the conversation ends.

• Act on what you hear. Respond to feedback, ideas, or concerns.
• Circle back. Show that their input mattered: “Based on what you shared, we decided to…”

When people see that being heard leads to impact, they’re far more likely to speak up again.

Call to Action: Practice Listening This Week

In Herding Tigers, Todd Henry notes that dissatisfaction in teams almost always comes down to one feeling: not being listened to.

So, this week, try leading first with your ears.

• Choose one conversation to emphasize listening more. Work to be 80% listening and 20% talking.
• Ask one thoughtful, open-ended question during an interaction with someone. 
• End a conversation by summarizing what you heard and asking, “Did I get that right?”

These simple actions, done consistently, build trust faster than almost anything else we could offer as a leader.

Conclusion

Listening isn’t just a communication skill; it’s a reflection of character. It’s what happens when love, humility, empathy, and curiosity meet action.

When we listen well, we communicate: I see you. I value you. You matter to me.

And in doing so, we lead in a way that changes people—and often, ourselves.

So, this week, slow down. Be curious before compelling. And listen like every word matters...because it does.