Leadership Gold Part 7 of 10: Look, Listen, Ask
February 24, 2009 by dr. lam · 17 Comments
When John Maxwell has a meeting, he puts a tiny “L” at the corner of one of his pages to remind him to listen. He adds another “L” next to it for look, i.e., look at the person you are listening to. I myself am perhaps the most guilty of wanting to dominate a conversation and failing to listen. Perhaps I can blame my XY chromosome, as most men fail in this endeavor. My mom says I don’t listen to her very well. Well, I am trying at this endeavor and want to improve in this department of weakness of mine. More about my weaknesses further down.
A leader should be actively listening to his staff to get pertinent feedback, encourage creative ideas and to use that information as a source of ways to improve the team. Without encouraging other voices, a meeting or an encounter becomes a fruitless exercise. Just one voice screaming out his opinion. That is also why I value input and responses in these blogs. (In fact, I have designed this website uniquely to have as many voices on here as possible, e.g., on my blogs, forum posts, before and after gallery and soon to be on the videos too.) Two minds are always better than one. How about a thousand? I have made it a concerted effort to begin listening better and to conduct a meeting with more openness. My last meeting with my salon director was spent 80% of the time quiet just listening to the problems, prospects, and thoughts of my director so that I could learn what was going on and to better grasp if the direction taken was the right one.
I am combining another part of Maxwell’s dictums into one for the sake of trying to cram 23 of his ideas into 10 blogs. He says a great leader knows what questions to ask. The biggest question to ask is, “What mistakes am I making?” That is a tough one to ask and to hear. It is an important one. One person came up to Maxwell after a lecture and said, “Mr. Maxwell, a leader must put up a strong front and never show his weaknesses.” Maxwell retorted, “You are assuming your staff does not already know your weaknesses. They do. Once you admit them, they are reassured that you know yourself and they don’t have to keep pretending that you don’t know.” When a leader admits his own weaknesses, he can then ask the staff to “pushback”, i.e., to give opinions in a free forum to help with the organization. He should encourage a roundtable discussion free of rejection and fear from a leader’s dismissive remarks.
I myself am constantly working to open up my weaknesses to my staff. What are they? First and foremost, I am not a great administrator. That is why Dianne and Constanze work as my principal administrators but also everyone around them work as their own administrators. When we had a vacuum for someone to help with ordering, Darla stepped in and took over. When Vassilka realized that photo taking and transferring was something that she could do well and efficiently, she took that over without my even asking. When I couldn’t fit all my hair transplant consults now until May, Constanze looked at a creative way to get them in earlier and Emina stepped up to help. I want to thank my team for every small and big thing they do because I notice each and everything they do, and I am flabbergasted at the quality of Team LFP.
What are my strengths besides plastic surgery? I am a connector and I care. I love people, simply put. Therefore, I constantly work to engage my team and put them together on equal footing to excel. However, I realized that my weakness as an administrator did not permit me to resign my task as CEO. I now am constantly meeting with my administrators to make sure that they are not alone in their task. I have weekly (sometimes every other day meetings with my spa director); I ask my nursing administrator what things are going on that I need to know about; and I meet with my salon director once a month and get feedback from him once or twice a week on matters usually by phone. I am focused now on asking what am I doing wrong and what could I do better.