Knowing How to Listen
(Parte 2: La leadership)
Remember how I talked about the birth of the Retail division, which was so poorly received by the rest of the tech-nerd organization? I must say that over time, that new department has been enriched with many new features, new professional roles (I'd say invented from scratch, or almost), new skills, new working methods:
In this case, "Knowing How to Listen" was synonymous with #delegate ; because, even if you observe every day that the operating methods of that part of the company aren't exactly as you imagined, you have to let them live because they work and are appreciated by customers (and, after years, even by the rest of the more established internal teams...). You simply have to stay attentive and listen to your managers' needs, intervening only in times of need or blockage.
Thus, listening becomes a component of #leadership (at least in my opinion). I particularly remember a critical moment in our growth, around 100 people, when staff turnover suddenly exploded: I didn't understand, I was disappointed; they told me the cause was my utter inconsistency , as I was giving different answers to the same questions. I remember holding a meeting with the company's champions (and we actually then activated actual coaching sessions for team management and problem solving) to explain that the answers to the same questions couldn't be the same because it was necessary to contextualize: understand the situation, the size of the project, the interlocutor (was he a tech guy? A businessman? A finance guy?), know the budget, the maturity of the supporting project team, and so on... These were obvious aspects to me, having worked in sectors and companies of very different sizes and having studied the PMBOK and project management in depth, but, in reality, the issue wasn't at all obvious to most people.
It was an extremely challenging time because I hadn't realized that the team, despite its highly organized committee, wasn't ready for the complexity of the increasingly larger projects that were coming. I slowed down the growth (as a competitive athlete, I must say it was extremely difficult for me to do so) to make people understand that, precisely, being the leader of your team required knowing how to manage a series of new aspects: it was important to bring everyone back on board within the company, as much as possible. "Knowing How to Listen" also means knowing how to discuss things with your teams to understand if we're all moving in the same direction at a sustainable "race pace," I would say , and to understand the potential difficulties.
.avif)
Delegate and trust the team
Mistakes and awareness
I can say that sometimes, I myself have listened very little in my choices, or rather, I have listened to everyone but then I have done my own thing (how many times have I heard "in the end you always do your own thing"). But, sometimes, the biggest mistakes have been made precisely because I was unable to "listen" to the moment , to understand that the decision needed to be weighed more carefully, and I was too quick in making decisions, not giving due weight to decisions that in reality would have proved very important (like... "come on, it's impossible for this to happen, it's marginal, we know how to manage it"... but then over time the balance, management, or the market changes and that thing costs you money, time, and effort to correct...).
This is especially true when the issues to be addressed are increasingly complex and, obviously, for many reasons, you don't have all the elements needed to make the best choice. However, at a certain point you have to decide anyway and move forward (and... after a while, you no longer reconsider that choice, caught up in a thousand other priorities).
Consequently, "Knowing How to Listen" turns out to be a method for making fewer mistakes and wasting less time and energy correcting them later (the famous 80-20 rule, or slowing down to go faster later). Because if you truly listen to your feelings, your values, or your trusted traveling companions (who may be opposing you at that precise moment), you understand that the situation isn't right, you need to stop and change course immediately, ultimately living better, with less stress. Over the years, I've learned to sleep on it and #procrastinate on certain decisions, even if it's not in my nature.
The wasted talent
I could cite an anecdote in closing.
We were working with a large brand, a brand that could have been instrumental in making a further leap in the world of luxury in terms of positioning and size: we chose to pull the plug because its truly invasive way of working was splitting our organization.
I think about it every now and then.
At that point, I listened to my team, who were at their wits' end. But then, years later, a dear friend, the best retailer in Rome, asked me a question: "Why did you abandon that brand? They told me, you know... Christian isn't right... It's not right ! Why didn't you take the leap? The market was waiting for you; you could have been a benchmark in Italy and beyond."
It killed me! He was telling me I didn't have the balls, and he was right because I actually had the ability (here's a case of "wasted talent"... but we'll get back to that shortly): I should have looked beyond that and figured out how to overcome that difficult moment for the team with new resources, to get into the "Champion League."
And here we are, closing with perhaps the most important aspect of “Knowing How to Listen”.
It's about talent: very often, young entrepreneurs and talented young people, in various fields, from sports to professions to manual skills, with great abilities and intelligence (at least on paper), listen very little; they're convinced they have all the answers just because they've proven to be a little better than average, but in reality, they haven't figured out what league they can compete in, and they don't know their true potential, and they don't fully exploit it.
.avif)
The invitation to talents
This is the case, as I mentioned above, of " wasted talent ", one of the things that makes me saddest: not seeing the potential expressed to the fullest in a young person, in a team, in a team, in a company just because there is a lack of listening to experienced figures who perhaps seem a little slow and awkward but in reality are very advanced.
It's okay for talent to make mistakes, but sometimes, a lack of listening prevents us from overcoming our limitations . Talent isn't enough to realize great ideas or achieve great results, and the real risk is that, over time, we lose motivation or lose our way.
So the invitation to all talents is to "Know How to Listen" more to the "old" even if they are sometimes burdensome or incomprehensible, to try to understand that, just because they have different mechanisms for reasoning and acting, they are not so stupid after all and if they want to give "passionate and disinterested" advice there is a reason: perhaps because they have already experienced certain things and only want to help, even giving advice that apparently seems stupid or distant or requires a lot of effort to be current and consistent, but in the end is the salt of success in what you want to achieve.
Author - Christian Nucibella