Think about the best leaders you've worked with. What separates them from the crappy leaders? At the top of your list is probably that they were willing to listen to you. I'm not talking about giving lip service about listening, but actually hearing what you have to say. They may not agree with you, but they're willing to explain why when they don't.
We generally understand that we have to listen to customers, but for some reason, certain leaders are unwilling to listen to the people who make the proverbial sausage. No person, especially when charged with running a company, can know everything about what happens down the line, nor should they have to. But while they must delegate, they must also hear from the delegates. That has to chain down to the line worker, whether it's a software engineer or someone mounting bumpers on cars.
There are two big misfires that I often see. The first is that success breeds a sense that they need not listen. This is hubris and arrogance, but it doesn't feel like it in the moment when things are good. But the desire for continuous improvement, and accepting that things can and will change quickly, is reason to keep listening. What you do and how you do it can't remain static.
The other thing is a classic middle management mistake. They make decisions or hand down processes or protocols with zero input from the people that need to implement them. If you ask them what the success criteria of these changes are, let alone how to measure them, they likely don't have an answer. I know about this one all too well, because earlier in my career, I was guilty of doing this. I invoked changes that worked in a contextually different and irrelevant scenario, and people did not react well.
These are cultural issues that often permeate throughout an organization. Some early leaders that I worked for didn't listen to anyone, they just made decisions, and when things were good, I figured that this is what leaders did. It had negative morale implications, but we were still getting paid, so who was I to judge? It's when things go south, that you start to see how important it is to get all of the information, from customers and from the people who make your things.
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