Time to give yourself a big hand 🖐 for getting through the first five of 2025! Let’s get ready to dive into Summer and hopefully step away from those exhausting (exhilarating?) leadership duties for a little downtime-playtime over the next few months.
What’s trending for me this month are two important leadership topics. For this issue, I’m wondering how you would assess your listening skills, and if your staff and colleagues would agree with your assessment. Why?
Last week I attended a Lumina Learning Practitioner’s session and was inspired by guest speaker, Dave Closson, a former combat Veteran and university Police Officer who has suffered from PTSD, substance misuse, and a brain injury. Now a gifted and highly-experienced trainer and professional facilitator, he provides leadership development and tailored workshops to agency, non-profit and community coalition prevention leaders.
Dave spoke about the importance of leaders using the art of listening to build psychological safety in their organizations. As we know, listening well builds trust because people feel heard, seen and respected. As successful leaders, we may think we listen well, but often our ‘conditioned tendencies’ are to respond with assurances and advice, wanting to support by fixing. But is this listening, or communication? When the leader (listener’s) response is “tell me more,” and their objective is to be in attunement, then they are practicing the skill of listening.
How do you assess your listening skills? Importantly, would your team or colleagues say that you listen in a way that makes them feel seen, heard and respected?
Want to find out? Take the complimentary Self-Aware Leader Digital 360-Feedback Assessment and see where you stack up against others’ perceptions of your listening skills, and a lot of other key leadership best practices.
The second trending topic for me is how leaders use AI-tools to make them personally more effective and address some of their challenges. In my next email roundup in 2 weeks, I’ll share some additional thoughts and provide resources to keep you informed on AI trends for 2025 and on how other leaders and teams are integrating and adapting AI (or not!).
In the meantime, here are a few resources to assess and build your leadership listening skills.
📚 Read: Are You Really A Good Listener?
👀 Watch: Simon Sinek: The Art of Listening
👂 Listen: What Leaders Get Wrong About Listening
🙋♀️ Try: The Self-Aware Leader Digital 360-Feedback Assessment