Random musings ... How are your listening skills? Many leaders, when asked that question, respond in terms of their good manners. They consider listening to be something they need to do enough of in a conversation. Some, more arrogant than others, waste even this limited opportunity to expand their horizons. They make sure the other person has enough time to talk and figure that's the same as listening. Even if Random musings …How are your listening skills?Many leaders, when asked that question, respond in terms of their good manners. They consider listening to be something they need to do enough of in a conversation. Some, more arrogant than others, waste even this limited opportunity to expand their horizons. They make sure the other person has enough time to talk and figure that’s the same as listening. Even if you genuinely listen to the other people in a conversation, though, that’s a far cry from having the listening skills leaders need. Truly effective leaders understand the need for organizational listening – the ability to know what’s really going on in their organization.This is far from easy, because every listening channel available to a leader has serious flaws. Most leaders rely heavily on their chain of command – the organizational hierarchy that connects them to staff. It’s a shame. The chain of command has one advantage – the efficient use of time, because the chain of command filters and summarizes information, making sure you get only what’s most important.It also has a huge disadvantage: It filters and summarizes, which means anything that shows anyone in your management team in a bad light is likely to be filtered out. Your chain of command is carefully designed to keep you and the information you need the most away from each other. So you add other channels as well. For example, you can “manage by walking around” and talk to individual employees, one-on-one, in their cubicles while you see what they’re up to. This has the advantage of giving you the nuances as well as the headlines. It has two disadvantages: It’s very time-intensive, and employees aren’t likely to give you any hard news when they can be overheard. Heck, they aren’t likely to give you hard news when they can’t be overheard, either.Take any listening channel you can think of and you’ll find serious flaws. Which means you have only one recourse: Use as many as you can, balancing their deficiencies to give you as complete a picture of the situation as possible.That, of course, will take time, something that’s generally in very short supply. There’s only one solution for that: Get control of your schedule by any means necessary, and budget time each week for organizational listening. After all, what’s more important: Adding and then checking off a couple of additional items on your task list, or making sure the ones you do check off are done the way they should be?– Bob ——– Technology Industry