We see examples of the misuse of power and poor leadership in the news on a daily basis, whether on the political, corporate, or world stages. But recently we have been seeing a refreshing leadership style by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. What is it about him that has us all so enamored?

We are bearing witness to a leader who is using courage and compassion to lead his people. Indeed, Zelensky’s heart-based leadership has captured the hearts of his people and those around the world. Zelensky is rewriting history by embodying the power of the heart in his leadership.

What Is Heart-Based Leadership? In action, it is when leaders fully utilize their skills and humanness to guide their communication, choices, and relationships with others.

Men aspiring to be allies and leaders typically ask the question, “What do I do?” The reality is that this is more a question about our states of being and we should ask ourselves how to achieve our highest state.

If we all need to aspire to be in our best state, then most certainly our leaders need to be in theirs — to connect with us, to empower us, to lead from their hearts.

Men in power and position need to be in their hearts and model a different relationship with their own sense of masculinity. As a playbook for leaders, the power of the heart has five cornerstones to guide leadership:

Emotional Literacy
Emotional literacy requires that we have a conscious relationship with our emotions so we can experience them instead of ignore them and allow them to build unchecked. More importantly, we can respond instead of reacting. No doubt Zelensky feels unimaginable depths of fear, anger and sadness, yet he remains grounded and taps into the strength of his heart to maintain composure and lead his people.

Vulnerability
Vulnerability gets a bad rap and is unfortunately often seen as a sign of weakness as opposed to a sign of strength. True power comes from one’s willingness to be vulnerable — and this is especially true for leaders, as vulnerability fosters trust and respect from others. We can measure how brave you are by how vulnerable you’re willing to be. President Zelensky, perhaps thanks to his training as an actor, models his emotions for all to see, and allows vulnerability to be one of his strengths. Further, his vulnerability serves to demonstrate the deep empathy he has for his people.

Authenticity
Instead of portraying the image of what you think others need to see, which is persona-driven, authenticity is all about character … as in yours. People see through the performative tactics of inauthentic leadership. Zelensky recognizes the world stage he finds himself on and rather than performing, he shows us who he really is. The result? Both his people and the international community want to follow and support him. His authenticity is quickly earning him trust and respect.

Inclusivity
Those who lead from the heart possess the power to make everyone feel included. When people feel like they belong, they make more positive contributions. A culture of inclusion is imperative for good performance in business as in life. The solidarity Zelensky has inspired amongst Ukrainians and the international community at large is a testament to his inclusive leadership.

Love
There is true love in seeing, listening to, respecting, and valuing others for who they are and what they contribute. When Zelinsky recognizes the men, women, and children around him who have been through horrific experiences, when he listens to their stories, respects them, and values their contributions, he is demonstrating love.

There is true power in leading with heart. It takes copious amounts of courage and compassion — for oneself as well as for others. Those who lead with heart are authentic and demonstrate vulnerability. While they are not fearless, they are willing to face their own emotions and grow from their experiences. They center others, encourage others, and don’t let their egos run the show. They know life is not a dress rehearsal, and ergo, they work indefatigably to achieve their highest state of being. Heart-based leaders galvanize the strength of those they lead and inspire them to rise to their highest states — where just about anything is possible.

In 2016, I held a learning exercise with 222 senior leaders from a sophisticated billion-dollar technology company. I asked attendees to jot down the company’s single-sentence corporate mission statement on an index card. Unfortunately, less than 2% of the leaders in attendance could do so.

I asked leaders to describe their job roles in five to seven bullet points on a second index card. The vast majority of responses, 86%, had to do with job functions, the duties and tasks associated with their roles: managing, staffing, problem-solving, forecasting, strategizing, traveling, etc.

Only 14% of the responses related to their job’s purpose, their single highest priority at work. These responses included relationship-building, delighting customers, and going the extra mile.

On a third index card, I asked the group to record their employees’ single highest priority at work. Roughly 70% of their responses were—you guessed it—about their employees’ job functions.

Later in the presentation, I revisited this question, suggesting that these leaders pose the question to employees: “What’s your single highest priority at work?”

Then I asked the group, “What would you want them to say?”

The group came alive as people shared aspirational responses they’d hope to hear from their teams, such as safety, customer service, quality, productivity, cost containment, and teamwork.

Then I asked the group, “But how would they know to say that?”

The room grew quiet as these leaders faced a sobering realization.

Employees model their leaders

Employees are pretty observant; they don’t miss much. The actions and behaviors they see modeled and the ideals their immediate supervisor appears to value will inform their decisions and behavior at work. If they see a management team that prioritizes tasks, efficiencies, and productivity (job functions), then that’s what they’ll focus on—often at the expense of the company’s own mission.

Jobs are more than ‘what’ and ‘how’

In every organization, there’s a systemic relationship between purpose (why we do something), the work itself (what we do), and the methods used (how we do it).

In the absence of a clearly defined “why we do something,” other priorities (usually job functions) fill the void. In these instances, employees go to work to reliably execute job assignments rather than with the mission to achieve a higher purpose. They’re given a task to work on rather than a purpose to work toward.

But work is more fulfilling when employees know that what they do makes a difference and that their jobs have purpose and meaning. This isn’t a romantic notion. In most organizations, purpose and meaning are elusive and difficult to define, measure, and pursue.

Why your employees don’t know their ‘why’

As my example above shows, leaders and managers who discount the relevance of meaning in the workplace may lack it themselves. And if these leadership teams are disconnected from their purpose at work, how can their subordinates reasonably be expected to reflect their purpose in their actions and behaviors consistently?

They can’t. Your employees don’t know their “why” for three very real reasons:

Job functions are visible and concrete. Managers can see them, touch them, and measure them daily. They are a real, relevant, and credible part of managers’ world of work, whereas job purpose is nebulous, abstract, difficult to see clearly, and tough to articulate. And it comes up only now and then (e.g., annual all-employee meetings, Customer Service Week, or new-hire orientations).

Ongoing conversations about job purpose are rare. We’re all too busy talking about job functions and concerning ourselves with quotas, productivity, and other metrics. Additionally, managers tend to focus almost exclusively on job functions because they’re what their bosses tend to focus on.

Job purpose is poorly defined—if at all. Job purpose is seldom articulated in words, modeled by leadership, or intentionally connected to employees’ daily job responsibilities. At most, it may be relegated to the employee handbook, a laminated wallet card, an annual report, the company website, or a plaque in the executive corridor.

Managers lack tools and processes that highlight job purpose. Because managers lack these tools, any early progress or enthusiasm following an event that showcases job purpose quickly loses momentum as job functions reassume center stage.

Creating job purpose starts with you

Reflect on your focus at work. What questions do you tend to ask? What priorities do you emphasize? What expectations do you convey? Consider your last meeting agenda. What percentage of it pertained to job functions versus job purpose? Creating purpose for your employees starts with you.

The answer to this question is key to those of us who spend time thinking about organizational development.

A business is a ‘thing’, a linear entity that takes money in – pits it against the costs of creating this money – and kicks out a profit. It is monitored by the sole metric of ‘money created’.

An organization is an exact opposite.

An organization is considered to be a living, breathing, layered organism that at any given time is thriving, or struggling, or changing, or resting, or ramping up. It’s alive and is responding to stimuli all the time: from leaders, customers, markets, and employees. It responds to things done well. And it responds to things done badly.

From a leadership perspective, it is important to be clear about how you view the entity you’re leading.

If you are seeing it as a business, your task is to manage the business within this narrow field. This has upsides and downsides: on the upside, it is a simpler existence – you will inquire less, manage fewer metrics, and simply watch the P&L. The downside is that you have fewer options available to you in trying to leverage performance, and especially so when times are bad. For some leaders, it may be reasonable to take this simpler view of a business. If an individual is not drawn toward complexity, then a simpler worldview is easier to manage. I do have reservations about this approach. The business world of today brings many complexities into play:

• Rapid technology advances;
• The evolving nature of the employee;
• The more nuanced understanding of leadership;
• Disintermediation; and
• The power of the consumer.

Leaders need to embrace complexity and push themselves to think about topics that aren’t naturally considered to be relevant.

Questions to think about:

1. What is your view of the current ‘health’ of your organization, and how do you know this?
2. How is your organization currently changing, and what is it evolving from/evolving to?
3. How do other people experience you as a leader, and what are the implications for the greater organization you’re leading?
4. What is the primary shaper of your organization’s behaviors?
5. How well is your organization performing relative to its full potential? (Look at metrics beyond just revenue and profitability.)
6. What is your talent most motivated by?

Your reaction to these questions might be: “Who cares?” And to a business builder interested solely in kicking out a profit, that may be a fair enough answer.

However, if you are interested in building an organization that is sustainable, nimble, responsive, and that can improve continually, these are the questions that will ensure that you are overseeing this sort of entity.

Like most of you reading this article, I was initially dismayed and stunned by what happened at the Oscar awards ceremony earlier this year. As someone who studies the motivations of leaders and how they influence the people they lead, upon further reflection, my surprise gradually ebbed away. In this article, I’ll explain why.

First, we must all understand that the Slap Heard Around the World struck a chord around the world because it so closely mirrored what we’ve all been watching for over a month now on the global stage—a larger physical and economic power sauntering into the sovereign territory of a smaller one unannounced and attempting to strike it down. Hard.

You Used to Be Like Me

A leadership principle I teach to companies and organizations is called “Nothing Blinds Like Success.” As social psychologist Michael Hogg has uncovered, leaders are elected or selected because they have internalized the values, characteristics, and features of the group.

Over time, however, something unfortunate happens: they shift from being prototypical and representing what the group most cares about to being expelled—socially at first and, eventually for most, physically—from the same group they used to represent so well.

Consider Robert Mugabe. After winning the revolution against the white Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, the ZANU-Patriotic Front rebel leader became the prime minister of the newly independent republic of Zimbabwe in 1980.

Did Mugabe apply the caring and compassion for everyday Zimbabweans that caused his countrymen and women to follow him as a revolutionary in the governance of the country?

Not at all. Instead, he became a ruthless dictator who stewarded his country into becoming rated by the UN as one of the least habitable on the planet and a paragon of human rights violations for almost four decades until he was put under house arrest in 2017.

It Starts On the Way Up

How do leaders go from regular folks to first to worst? It begins with their ascent. As they rise to power, their followers focus on everything they say and do. Why? Their livelihoods depend on it.

With all this attention on them, leaders begin to believe they are larger than life. They start to believe their own press, to breathe their own exhaust. They start having thoughts such as, “I am extraordinary. That’s why I’ve risen to this role. That’s why so many are focused on my every move.”

As a consequence of this type of thinking, they stop paying attention to the people they lead. Social psychological research has found that leaders are more likely to eat more than their share of the cookies, to allow more crumbs to fall from their mouths, and to eat with their mouths open than their subordinates.

Why? The higher an individual climbs the ladder of success, the less they attune to and empathize with others.

King Richard

Enough about the general dynamics of leadership: let’s now consider Will Smith. The veteran actor and producer is the third-highest-paid organizational member (at $40 million per movie) in an industry that currently employs over 250,000 people (down from over 440,000 before the pandemic).

Smith knew he was a shoe-in to receive its highest accolade to an individual member—the Best Actor award—and continue his ascent to becoming the highest-paid individual in the industry. Perhaps he really does merit the name King Richard.

Then, after his slap-down of Rock, like a highly powerful senior executive that offends many people in the room but knows it will damage the CEO more to make a scene of his forced departure than it will benefit the company, Smith refused to leave when asked by the Academy.

Power and Our Brightest Stars

As with Mugabe and most of our leaders who are comfortably embedded in their roles at the top of their fields and become disconnected from the rank-and-file (Pope Francis, the first pope to refuse to live in the Papal Palace in over a century, is a notable exception), Smith enacts a code of living that most of us cannot even fathom.

King Richard’s behavior is an unfortunate outcome of the delusion many leaders allow to guide them every day. Encircled by sycophantic followers rather than upright colleagues willing to share with them the real information of what’s happening in their organization that they desperately need to listen to in order to sustain their success, they live in a filter bubble almost entirely conceived by their own imagination. When you live at the top of the pyramid, you’re only surrounded by air.

Sometimes, like the recent Oscars, this unfortunate byproduct of a leader’s ascent to power can produce disastrous results—for the people they lead and the leaders themselves.

Full disclosure: I’m an acting coach, but I’m about to give you a phenomenally powerful business tip. My industry — entertainment — is as cutthroat as they come.

It’s intensely competitive and filled with risks and disappointments. From established and high-profile actors to those just starting out, my clients often face the same challenges as their counterparts in the business world. And as in any business, relationships play an enormous role in success.

Something I’ve seen over and over with my own clients is that it’s way too common to think of a business relationship as a friendship and assume a level of loyalty. Then they’re astonished to find that when it comes to that loyalty, business is business: nothing personal.

I’ll give you an example from the acting world that easily translates to business and entrepreneurship. A client of mine was talking about how great his relationship was with his new agent — as in, “We’re like best friends, she really looks out for me.” My radar was already going off: since he’d switched representation, this client, a gifted actor, had been chasing parts with little success. Granted, booking certain parts can feel like passing through the eye of a needle — with immense competition, the odds are pretty slim. But I wasn’t surprised when that client came to my studio soon after and said the agent had gone to bat for another actor she represented for the very same part he was vying for. He felt terribly betrayed.

The reality is abundantly clear, should you be willing to accept it. True loyalty has little value or place in business. It’s not that kindness and loyalty are nonexistent. We’ve all worked with people we felt we could count on, and people that are a pleasure to be around. But what makes a business relationship a good one isn’t loyalty. It’s whether or not that partner is performing up to your standards. If so, you should continue with them. If not, by all means, drop them and find someone better — which is exactly what I suggested my clients do. But it works both ways: If your performance becomes substandard, don’t be surprised if your partner drops you for someone else.

Why do we confuse professional and personal relationships? One key reason is that we forget the differences:

• Personal relationships are based on the quality of the bond you have with the other person and are based on intimacy, trust, and selflessness. One can trust these relationships because they are not always based on self-first thinking. The people who truly love us at times do things for our betterment before theirs. The relationship should be a mutually positive exchange built on love, support and care. The focus should be on each other’s well-being.

• Professional relationships may have some of the above positive qualities, but they are focused on the advancement of both parties’ careers and professional goals. What is usually at stake in these relationships is financial or reputation-based. Intimacy is not required — and perhaps not even wise. Trust is not given easily but earned over time.

Different Deceptions, Different Strategies

Both professional and personal relationships are fraught with the possibility of disappointment, exploitation and jealousy. But there’s a key difference. In personal relationships, revelations around poor performance and disloyalty tend to be easily spotted and addressed. Professional deceptions can be much harder to deal with and recognize.

I recommend that my clients never forget that the people with whom you do business are not your friends or family. They are your business associates. This doesn’t mean you should not appreciate genuine, well-intentioned behavior on their part. It just means you need to keep your eyes open. Don’t blindly or naively place your trust in a business associate. Know in your heart that they will always be looking out for themselves first.

Understanding this, you can move forward to manage these relationships with grace, dignity, and confidence.

3 Kinds of Friendships

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle noted that every relationship falls into one of three categories:

1. The relationship of advantage: This is a relationship where the other person is profitable to you in some way. And it’s very likely that you are profitable to them.
2. The relationship of comfort: This relationship is based on someone’s company or association you find pleasurable, as in fun friends.
3. The relationship of value: This is a relationship based on mutual appreciation and esteem. This type of relationship is based on agreed-upon ethics and takes longer to build.

According to Aristotle, the first two don’t last as long as the third kind of relationship. It’s worth keeping these categories in mind as you examine your own — both personal and professional. From a business standpoint, this also helps you stay clear on the realities of who you’re dealing with. And know that it’s fine to have a wonderful relationship with your business connections, just as long as you resolve to remain aware of the dynamics.

It’s always better to understand and know what kind of friend/ employee/employer your business associate is than to be surprised when their “just business” stance puts you at a disadvantage. And as long as you live within your own moral code, you can take whatever action you believe is best — and lower your risk of being caught vulnerable by someone you thought was your business BFF.

In order to succeed, managers and team members need to be genuine partners. This raises an important question: how can managers and their teams become effective partners?

As a team leader or team member, five qualities can provide you with a useful foundation for partnership. Empathy, respect, trust, alignment and partnership all relate to creating meaningful partnership between managers and teams. 

Empathy is a profound appreciation for the perspective of others — understanding their challenges, their goals, how they feel, and what’s important to them in the working relationship. The emotional capacity to feel for another on your team is a key underpinning of successful collaboration. Mutual empathy between the team leader and the team is a necessary start to creating meaningful partnership at work. 

Respect in a work context is when a person sees another as a valid and legitimate partner, deserving of rights we would expect ourselves, and someone with whom we need to cooperate in order to do our job. Respect includes valuing the other person, their skills and abilities, and the unique experiences and background they bring to the partnership. Once there is mutual empathy between the leader and the team, respect will naturally follow. Like empathy, respect is foundational. 

Trust in the workplace implies high confidence in other people at work. It means believing that they won’t speak ill of you or harm you in any way. It includes transparency, keeping commitments, reliability, and ethical conduct. Once you can understand others’ perspectives and value them as legitimate partners, trust will form over time in the relationship.  

Alignment is when a manager and all the members of a team are on the same page and moving in the same direction. It implies cohesion, coordination, connection, and vigorous team collaboration towards a common goal. It includes high agreement on goals, use of resources, processes, practices, and norms. Empathy, respect, and trust are required to help a team achieve alignment.  

Last, partnership is when leaders and their teams are fully aligned and able to work effectively together. They support each other, accept mutual accountability for the success of what they do together and for the health and welfare of the relationship. It is a state of high interdependence and shared fate. It implies a mutuality where both leaders and team members feel very supported and are able to succeed. 

The five components to meaningful partnership are somewhat sequential, at least at the start. Improving empathy leads to higher respect for the work that team members do, and the people themselves. Respectful relationships are ones where we can then continuously strengthen trust. When there’s trustworthiness and mutual trust, most working relationships will begin to experience alignment. And, alignment can lead to that feeling of close partnership. However, we recognize that this order is not rigid, because these factors are also mutually reinforcing. For example, as we strengthen trust, it’s likely that empathy will also increase.  

Over time, an effective partnership that continues to improve may become meaningful. The word meaningful is intentional. In common discourse, you might say a person like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg lead a meaningful life; that it’s time for a meaningful change; or when there’s a conflict, we need to have a meaningful conversation. In all cases, it refers to something notably above and beyond, fulfilling a higher purpose, and having considerable impact. Meaningful partnership is a partnership that has impact and the power to transform an organization.  

Unfortunately, many employees at all levels often don’t feel appreciated, supported, or fully able to achieve because one or more of the five elements are missing. Team leaders can get frustrated with team members, and vice versa. And, team members can often become frustrated with other team members. For many in today’s organizations, it’s often a three-way intersection of frustration! Further, during the pandemic, many team members feel even more alienated, isolated, and anxious. This means that there’s yet more need for the strong team connection that comes with a good partnership.  

To form meaningful partnerships, here are five simple strategies: 

1. Practice empathy. The most important activity you can do to increase empathy is to employ active listening with your team members. Make sure to listen to them when they talk about work as well as when they talk about personal issues. If you show a sincere interest and are willing to help, you’re on your way to developing empathy. One other powerful way to increase empathy is to ask: What are your expectations of me? How can I help you to feel supported and to succeed? Then really listen to the responses, discuss areas where you may be confused or uncertain of what is said, and consider how you can fulfil these expectations. Next share your expectations of them and discuss how these expectations are the same or different as what they shared. 

2. Build respect. The most important actions for building respect are to leverage the strengths of others, value their time and workloads, and recognize their important contributions. Find opportunities for public praise and appreciation. And value who they are as unique individuals with special backgrounds, skills, and experiences. 

3. Develop trust. Trust is a reciprocal process. Thus, to build trust, you have to show trust, and also to demonstrate that you can be trusted. This requires acting with transparency, being honest, and behaving ethically in your relationships. 

4. Strive for alignment. This is when your team is working together and in strong agreement about goals, use of time and resources, practices and customs, and the best ways to get things done. Alignment is that secret sauce that makes teams win — they work as one with cohesion, coordination, and collaboration.  

5. Establish partnership. Alignment will, over time, lead to a healthy, successful, meaningful partnership with your team. When people work as partners, they feel supported, they do their best work, and they stay. They know that their partner has their back, understands their needs, and will do everything they can to make sure the team succeeds. When that’s all happening, success becomes inevitable.  

Timothy M. Franz, Ph.D., is an Organizational Psychologist, Professor of Psychology, and Chair at St. John Fisher College. In addition to his academic role, he also works as an organizational consultant through his firm, Franz Consulting. 

Seth R. Silver, Ed.D., is the principal of Silver Consulting, Inc., and has worked with hundreds of diverse clients on leadership, cultural change, employee engagement and workplace success. Dr. Silver was also an associate professor of Human Resource Development at St. John Fisher College. Their new book, Meaningful Partnership at Work: How the Workplace Covenant Ensures Mutual Accountability and Success between Leaders and Teams (Productivity Press, Aug. 27, 2021), provides a powerful model of how work partnerships can be created and sustained.

“There is a toxic culture developing in the team and we are losing people.”

I zoomed into the conversation – this was a completely unexpected comment. It was a familiar situation in larger companies which were not paying attention to the team dynamics, but to hear it at start-up, one that had a deep purpose, an accomplished team, stellar reputation, and a driven leader?

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I am with another start-up, in their meeting room with a group of  Gen Z’s: their culture is driven my autonomy, mastery, innovation,  and passion and yet their spirit seems heavy. I don’t see or feel excitement and drive: I hear a lack of belonging, a feeling of being unheard, and musings on finding another fit.

Separately, sitting with a group of eight men on a team that are C-3 and who lead digital transformation in a large telecom, many of whom have been working together for years yet when we talk about roles, ‘who do you report to again?,’ asks one of the participants. Others also seem unsure but mostly they are surprised at the gaps in the knowledge they have for each other. When we talk about Covid, ‘I had no idea it’s been so tough for you’, is one of the comments.

At a different meeting I was observing, one of the executives interjected suddenly, ‘I have to leave this meeting for an hour’. There was no explanation. Suddenly it felt like was there was a secret in the room.

I suggested there was some tension at the departure of this executive and the CEO, who was also in the room, then explained in detail the urgent matter he was attending to. There was then a palpable sense of relief but what the CEO had not realised earlier was the fact that what was known to her required vocalising to others. 

And there are many more such anecdotes.

We talk about team work often, and most leaders – whether at  start-ups or established companies –   see it as a key to unlock success. Data shows us that 60% of new ventures fail due to problems with the team. Creating the right team culture is quoted as paramount. Culture lives within teams, and thus it spreads into an organisation. 

So how do leadership teams build and sustain a successful team culture and then roll it out? 

Who leads this initiative?  

Some might argue it is the HR division. However, the skills required to unearth the patterns that hold teams back and then to address them in ways that feel safe yet courageous, objective and impactful are very distinctive – they rely on coaching, facilitation, group dynamics psychology, constellation work, conflict management and experience in sensing the room.  

If we are serious about creating teams that flourish and perform we need an expert in teams to support the organisation. We need a Team Guardian (TG). And clearly HR would be essential in its role to liaise with the TG.  

Start-up’s are particularly in need. Founders are driven by passion; dealing with daily challenges, external stakeholders and having to drive the business forward. They suddenly find themselves move from 3 people to 30 or 300 having at times never managed a team or had the time to think about culture. They often lead by instinct and at times this works well but at some point they have to sit down and – in addition to capital raising, hiring, strategy –  reflect and focus on the state of the team. How are they collectively performing? How are they connecting and communicating? What is being missed? What are the undercurrents? Are they clear and aligned on strategy and vision?  At some point this becomes an essential priority. Only, mostly, they have no time and/or experience to do this effectively.  

TG’s are professionals and their super power is to build, nurture and sustain high performing teams; to support key players in their goals, and to resolve conflict.

This support is vital for all leaders. And for start-up’s it can be the key to success – how the team works is make or break.  

So how can this work practically?

Can a TG be an EXCOM member? What is the scope and longevity of the role? How important is objectivity and the perception of objectivity? How is the TG to be renumerated?  And how is the success of TG’s to be measured – what are the KPIs?   

What is clearer to answer is how a TG’s impact can be measured: using dimensions connected to belonging, openness/communication, clarity/alignment, safety, and meeting dynamics is a very good start. Naturally within each team there may be specific and proprietary challenges that the TG will have to unearth, diagnose, address and assess.

Belonging and safety are key to us as humans. When we feel we belong our commitment is higher, as is our performance. Safety, includes the ability to speak up, to be controversial, to be vulnerable, and to be courageous.  In such an environment, communication flows, defences are down, we can hear each other and also feel heard leading to clarity between team members.  Clear and open communication, underpinned by trust is empowering and creates ownership and a sense of alignment. 

Like other executives, the tenure of a TG will depend on their scope, need and impact.

In my experience, TG’s need to work with most members of the leadership team both individually and as a team. Although this number can vary depending on contextual complexity and will be impacted by timespan, a team that invests 6-9 days initially (in a year) with their TG can see significant progress. This can then be supplemented with targeted individual coaching. 

The TG will typically work with multiple teams within an organisation assessing the larger relational dynamics and being able to interweave learnings from all the teams to create a shared language and alignment. 

Can it be full time role? Yes and no:  it would depend on size and complexity of the entity in question.  Another multifaceted question to answer is how will a TG be engaged? As an employee, consultant, and/or owner coach?

This is a role that is emerging as a necessity and as it is embraced will continue to evolve.

Time to get a TG?

The first potential issue with the traditional active listening model is that it creates the opportunity to appear as if we are attentively listening when we are not.

There is a huge difference between appearing to listen and actually listening. I would confidently wager that many readers are quite skilled at maintaining eye contact, smiling, nodding, occasionally paraphrasing what they hear, or at least repeating the last word they heard with a questioning tone. This all while ignoring their counter-parts, thinking about some other pressing issue in their world, or preparing their next response. We cannot fully focus on two conversations simultaneously. Our internal monologue wins anytime someone is talking to us while we are talking to ourselves. 

Another common example of active listening backfiring is when we fail to deliver on a set of directions and expectations we have received. Maybe our spouse, boss, teacher, or friend has asked us to take care of something for them. From their perspective, we appear to be attentive and engaged so they believe we acknowledge and understand the request. Fast-forward to when we fail to follow through, and they feel personally disrespected because we have led them to believe that they had our commitment when we hadn’t fully listened to what we had committed to. 

Appearing to attentively listen should encourage someone to share more information. However, you may end up damaging the relationship if the roles reverse during the conversation and that person asks you questions you can’t answer because your mind wandered. The same risk applies if people expect you to retain the information they shared, and you either never receive it, completely forget it, or must return to ask them again at a later time.

The second potential issue with active listening is the perceived authenticity of the listener. Listeners who robotically respond, interject at awkward times, or consistently rely on the exact same verbal and nonverbal prompts can appear insincere and damage relationships as a result. 

Many years ago, I went on a camping trip with another family. We were all sitting around the fire late one night when an unexpected argument erupted between another couple. The wife stormed off and I ended up sitting at the fire alone with the husband. He told me how he felt about the situation and asked me if I understood where he was coming from. I answered, “absolutely,” because I felt like I truly did. He immediately looked at me and asked, “Do you? Because you always say ‘absolutely.’” I was taken aback. I really did feel like I understood his position, and I definitely didn’t want to appear humoring. Thankfully, I was able to recover and give him a specific example. That night, my unconscious response almost created a real problem, even though it came from an authentic place.

A third issue with active listening involves the potential for our verbal reflections of the speaker’s perceived feelings harming the relationship. The overwhelming majority of adults do not enjoy being treated like children, especially when they are feeling vulnerable. Telling someone what you believe they are thinking or feeling, or what you believe they should be thinking or feeling, can be received as an assumptive and parental approach, which might shut your counterparts down. 

In fact, the word “you” is among the most dangerous words in the English language. The more a listener responds with the word “you,” the more the speaker may feel his or her self-image is being attacked, which risks putting them on the defensive. We will discuss this idea in greater detail in chapter 13. This trap can be avoided by framing your response around the issue, not the person. For example, don’t say: “I can see that you’re angry.” Say: “Being treated that way can easily make people angry.” Don’t say: “You’re clearly upset.” Say: “People can only take being ignored for so long before they become upset.” Or “Feeling upset is a valid response.”

Finally, there are two opportunities that active listening doesn’t expressly address: What should we be specifically looking for during our critical conversations, and what do we do with our observations? Active listening illustrates how to convince our audiences that we are intently listening. Active listening focuses on evaluating the words spoken, observing body language, and emphasizing the importance of responding empathetically. However, the process doesn’t go into great detail on how to increase the power and accuracy of our observations, or how to activate the valuable intelligence we focus on picking up.

1) Keep Continuous Eye Contact. Distractions come in a variety of ways: thoughts about not liking the speaker, finding them dull, not liking their voice, noise coming from outside the room, noise coming from outside the window, feeling hungry, thinking about how your date with the girl in accounting is going to go later tonight, etc. As Tony Robbins says, “Where attention goes, energy flows.” During this team meeting, your job is to give the speaker 100% of your energy, not your thoughts about them (or tonight’s date). Do so by keeping continuous eye contact with them, not bringing your attention anywhere else.

2) Avoid Reframing Responses While Others Speak. Another place your thoughts may go is to formulate answers while the meeting leader speaks. Perhaps you are simply inspired and want to excitedly answer or disagree and are bursting to interject. To actively listen, our brains need to be silent and focused. If we’re thinking about how we will answer, it’s physiologically impossible for our brain to fully listen. This puts us in danger of missing what the speaker is saying. At meetings, when someone is speaking, practice actively focus on them and every word they are saying. When the speaker is done with their point, pause for a few seconds, then begin to formulate your response.

3) Pay Attention to Sense-Based Language. Some of us learn visually, others auditorily or kinesthetically; generally, we have a preference. But did you know people will give away their learning preferences as they talk? For example, they might say, “Can you picture that?” or “It’s not so black and white” (visual); “Like music to my ears” or “That rings a Bell” (auditory); “I feel that” or “Working hand in hand” (kinesthetic). Make a point to really listen for these sense-based predicate phrases, as the speaker is unconsciously giving away how they learn and want to be spoken to! How can you use this to your advantage? In your conversation after the meeting, use similar sense-based language to create unconscious rapport with them!

4) Connect, Detail, Construct, Invent? Like with sense-based language, you can listen even more deeply for the methodology behind how the speaker communicates their message. Are they focusing on the big picture? (Connect). Are they statistic/fact-oriented? (Detail). Are they talking about the actual physical actions to be done? (Construct). Are they brainstorming possibilities? (Invent). I call these four profile types one’s “Processing Power.” They’re four main ways people synthesize or “process” the information they take in. Just like with sense-based language, they’re giving you an unconscious hint about themselves, so pay attention to which of these four profiles they’re coming from. When you formulate a response, you’re much more apt to be “speaking their language” when you hit a “Connect” personality with a “Connect” response! You can learn more about sense-based language and processing power profiles in my book “Unlock Inner Genius.”

5) If You Don’t Understand, Ask for Clarification. Even if you’re listening very clearly and attentively, you still may not fully understand. If this is the case, it is absolutely on you to let go of the wallflower routine and respectfully ask for clarification during a break or pause. This will help clear things up for you and show the speaker that you are listening attentively and care about getting their message accurately. Plus, it will help you avoid that awkward post-talk conversation in which you’re suddenly asked your opinion on something you didn’t fully understand!