What Leaders Get Wrong About Listening

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Listening well is an essential aspect of leadership - not just to maintain good relationships with employees, but to drive real business improvements and results. But many of us still get it wrong - or might think we are good listeners but don't give that impression to our teams. Jeff Yip, assistant professor of management at Simon Fraser University’s Beedle School of Business, explains why the skill is so important to business success and identifies the five main mistakes leaders make when it comes to listening. He is coauthor, along with Colin Fisher of University College London, of the HBR article “Are You Really A Good Listener?”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Before we begin, we have a couple of questions.
0:04.2	What do you love about HBR IdeaCast?
0:07.0	What would make IdeaCast even better?
0:09.4	What do you want less of?
0:11.7	Tell us, head over to HBR.org slash podcast survey to share your thoughts.
0:17.6	We want to make the show even better, but we need your help to do that. So head to
0:22.2	HBR.org slash podcast survey. Thank you.
0:27.2	I'm Adi Ignatius.
0:38.9	I'm Alison Beard, and this is the HPR IdeaCast.
0:48.7	All right, Alison, here's today's question.
0:50.9	Do you consider yourself a good listener?
0:53.9	Hmm, okay. I think that I am, especially when I'm hosting this show. I think my friends would
1:00.4	definitely say yes. I hope that my colleagues would say yes. Adi, you can probably answer that
1:05.3	better than I can. And then I think my husband and kids might say no because I'm often very distracted when I'm at home.
1:13.1	What about you, Addy?
1:15.1	Sorry, what?
1:18.3	Yeah, am I a good listener?
1:19.5	I mean, I'm trying to learn to be a good listener.
1:21.9	You know, I've been a boss for a lot of my career.
1:25.0	And, you know, I know it's really true that if in my position I come in
1:29.0	and just say, look, here's what I think about an issue. It kind of shuts down discussion.
1:32.5	So I've learned that part of good listening is to create a context where people feel empowered to
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.