But Don t Listen to Everything

But Don't Listen to Everything

However, do not confuse the need to be a good listener with the need to listen to droning baloney. You only need to listen to relevant information. Part of your job as an executive who excels is to discern relevant information from irrelevant information. "Brilliant leaders spot issues better than others, and they use this skill to keep the conversation on point. But they do not pretend to know all the answers," a Harvard law professor told me several years ago. In that vein, I recently saw a very senior aerospace engineer appropriately cut off a young executive who had for weeks monopolized the weekly staff meeting with irrelevant tales of his own importance. "Stop!" the senior engineer finally said. "We do not need all that information. Think about the purpose of the meeting before you start telling twenty-five people everything you did last week." So, while it is essential to develop listening skills, you also need to develop the sense of when it is time to cut off the information flow or to redirect it. Do so with abrupt clarity.