Partner Article

How to Lead so Your Employees Listen

For employees who don’t listen you must first of all consider whether and how you contribute to the situation.

•Are you clear in your communications?

•How do you usually check understanding?

•Where do you usually speak to people?

Is it a noisy or busy environment, easy to get distracted?

If it’s important do you speak to them in private? Do you ensure you won’t be disturbed?

•How do you speak to them?

Are you polite & respectful, or do you shout or lose your temper with them on occasions?

•Do you model good behaviour yourself?

Are you a good listener? Do you get easily annoyed?

The first step is to model the behaviour you want to see in others – it’s no good being directive and insisting people listen properly or keep calm, if you don’t! People will not trust or respect you if you are not consistent.

The second step is to set boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour. This can be done at objective setting or work allocation meetings with individuals, or it can be done as a team, by agreeing ground-rules for working together.

Collectively agreeing team ground-rules can be helpful, as it also allows work colleagues to notice and highlight when ground-rules are being broken or abused, rather than just you as the leader picking this up.

The third step is my old favourite - to be consistent and persistent in your actions. There is absolutely no point in setting or agreeing boundaries if you don’t take action when they’re overstepped. There is also no point in trying this for a week then giving up as it’s difficult to enforce!

By the same token, if you improve the way you communicate instructions and check understanding (by asking specific questions about what the employee is going to do), and then don’t follow up on a consistent basis, or you don’t persist in improving your own skills, then you cannot expect an improvement in others!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Julie Johnson, The Success Club .