Technology
Lending an ear
Why listening is one of the most important skills a leader needs
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Indianapolis | June 2008
Page 1 of 2
Anne Sellers
Managing principal, Sensory Technologies
What is a CEO’s role in
leading a company?
It’s a broad question but a
heavy one — a question that
has many possible answers. For
Anne Sellers, the answers start
at the bottom rungs of her
company and move upward.
The managing principal and
majority owner of Sensory
Technologies, a $20 million
audiovisual solutions company,
says that your job is to listen.
You need to listen to what
everyone in the company is saying, what your employees
are pleased with, what they
need help with and the ways
they feel management can
improve the company.
It can be a difficult task, particularly as you field criticism
on your performance as a
leader. But if you don’t allow
your employees to evaluate
your performance and give their
input on the company’s direction, you run the risk of losing
your best people and stalling
your company’s growth.
Smart Business spoke with
Sellers about why it is important
to listen to all of your employees and how you can become a
more effective listener.
Listen first; talk second. What
your employees have to say is
very important to listen to. They
are the people in the trenches.
They’re the people where the
rubber hits the road. They’re the
people who deal with the grit of
your business. They’re the people who see the trends of your
business, what the mood of your
clients are, whether money is
being gained or lost. You have to
trust them, and you need to communicate to them the fact that
they’re great employees. And if
they’re great employees with
the big picture in mind, they
know you may not be able to do
exactly as you wish you could
do, but you’ll deal with their
concerns one way or another.
As leaders, we first of all have
to listen to as much information
as we can. We need to take our
individual departments, talk to
the people in those departments,
get a sense of what those people
need in the trenches, then identify the issues that these people
feel are impediments to getting
their jobs done. So we identify
the issues and trends, and we
take action appropriately.
As the managing partner of
the company, hopefully I get
those trends correct and lead
the company in a direction that
puts us on the probable side of
those trends. But you alone
can’t do it. I cannot do it without
my partners. So total collaboration and total agreement on
where we need to go is always
the best course of action.
Let your employees impress you. One of the best things I have
found is visiting our larger client
projects as they’re finishing up. It
yields great communication time.
To begin with, you want to
make sure that you have a
happy client or customer. Then
you spend time with the managers on that project and you
give them a chance to talk to
you about what went right and
wrong on the job, what was
beautiful and what was ugly
about the job. Then before you
finish, you have a chance to ask
them how are things in general.
This approach yields fabulous
results. First, you get to spend
time with the client and hear
firsthand their degree of satisfaction. But more importantly,
the employees get to show off
their work, and you get to be
proud of that employee.
Then you get to hear how it
went, what the challenges are,
how to make things better, what
needs your attention in the
future.
This is where we face challenges. We have several satellite
offices. We meet these challenges by utilizing what we sell,
videoconferencing technology.
All of our regular departmental
meetings employ videoconferencing to bring everyone together, which allows us to read body
language and makes sure that
the message we’re trying to
send gets across, and that the
message people in the satellite
offices are trying to send gets
sent across.
Videoconferencing does go a
long way, but it’s not like shaking a person’s hand. So, as partners, we divide up into departments and schedule in-person
meeting times with each
employee regularly.
