In my last editorial, I began the conversation about soft skills and how it is often these skills that businesses need to work on in order to address their financial distress. Listening is not taught at business school.
This is all well and good but where do you add value? I have met many turnaround professionals who are great orators, but they somehow add little value to their client when the plan has been implemented.
The Harvard Business Review (HBR) article points out that there are some key questions that can add value to the soft skill development narrative. It is in these questions that turnaround professionals can add value.
Remember, these are questions you are asking your client.
Do you currently have access to diverse voices and sources of information within your team or organization, or even beyond its boundaries? Do you listen to them?
The HBR article points out that companies should think about the whole business and ask if they have real visibility of what’s happening on the ground as well as the boardroom.
Determine where the blind spots might be, or if there are gaps in the flow of communication that could allow for a smoldering crisis to take hold. Something that might help here is scenario-planning with your team. In the event of crises A,B or C, whose knowledge or expertise might you need — and can you currently access this?
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Do you routinely build other team members’ ideas or feedback into your decision-making after listening to input?
The HBR article points out that business leaders need to be honest about this. How amenable are they to other people’s input? And do they always seek the same counsel or are they open to hearing from a diversity of input?
Something that HBR has seen in its research is that effective crisis leaders are those who know how to defer to expertise wherever it surfaces within an organization or even externally. Think again about Ed Bastian and Adam Silver and how they looked to medical know-how from outside their own or their organizations’ fields, and ask yourself: Would you do the same?
What systems or processes might you need to put into place to surface and capture multi-stakeholder perspectives?
The HBR article points out that companies need to look at how communication is structured in their organization and whether there are silos that you need to address.
Is the flow of knowledge multilateral? How might company leaders ensure they hear voices other than those of their immediate team. In the age of Zoom and Teams, the workplace has become meeting-intensive, so what other mechanisms can companies use to capture good ideas from a diversity of perspectives?
In conclusion: listening is important
The HBR article points out that we need to remember that crises are inevitable. Even as we weather the longtail of Covid-19, new clouds are already gathering — you may be grappling with something in your organization right now.
How your clients fare in the next crisis, whether they fail to contain the damage or realize the opportunities to emerge more resilient than before, will depend on the agency of their leadership. If they don’t make judicious use of all the information they need to determine all of the losses and gains that crises foreshadow, they will leave themselves in the dark when they most need to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Listening is an important skill to develop.
The Mystery Practitioner is an industry commentator that focuses on the shifting dynamics and innovative thinking that BRPs and turnaround professionals will need to embrace in order to achieve success in their businesses.
