Ask and Listen

First, executives with staying power know how to ask a question, and they know how to listen. Jim Parker of Southwest Airlines believes that "knowing how to ask a question is the most important skill you can have." He adds that you can never refrain from asking a question out of fear of sounding stupid. It is better to find out the answer now than make a mistake because you were too embarrassed to ask a question.

Then you have to listen to the answer. According to Ron Gafford, CEO of Austin Industries, one of the most important personal management qualities that ensures good information flow is the ability to listen effectively. In fact, a wide array of people I interviewed, from aerospace executive Tom Gunn to Congressman Richard Gephardt, emphasized the importance of retaining the ability to listen—no matter how successful you become. On the flip side, a common character flaw in executives who lose their professional invincibility is the need to dominate every conversation. Tom O'Neill, CEO of the engineering giant Parsons Brinckerhoff in New York, notes that when you start to have some success in the world, it becomes easy to think that you know more than everyone else. As a result you either stop listening to others entirely or you only listen to your little corps of confidants, and you lose touch with what is really going on with your company. "That kind of pride and hubris is deadly to a career," O'Neill notes.

Dr. Joshua Korzenik, the leading medical researcher we met earlier, notes that "as soon as you think you have it all together, you have ended your ability to innovate." Instead, you become "ossified" and you can no longer advance in your career and in your thinking. Invincible executives are always learning, and to learn you need to listen.

In fact, it is a common theme in my research that invincible executives assume that they know less than everyone else. Consequently, they do not interrupt or cut short those who are reporting to them on relevant topics; they do not put words in other people's mouths; and they do not finish other people's sentences. The truly invincible leader does not feel a need to assert his or her authority in every conversation. To do so cuts short the information flow process.