She came in wanting to work on her communication skills. We spent most of our first three sessions not on how she spoke — but on how she listened. Or, more precisely, on how she didn’t.
This surprises most leaders. Communication, in their minds, is primarily about what comes out. The clarity of the message. The persuasiveness of the argument. The gravitas of the delivery.
What comes in — the actual receiving of another person’s communication — is treated as the passive part. The waiting phase, before it’s your turn to contribute.
It isn’t passive. And it isn’t waiting. And it is almost certainly the more important half of the equation.
What Leaders Actually Do When They Listen
When I ask leaders to describe what they’re doing when they’re “listening” in a senior conversation, the answers are revealing.
“Waiting for the point.” “Preparing my response.” “Assessing whether this matches what I already think.” “Monitoring the time.”
These are not listening. They are managing — the other person’s communication, through the filter of your own agenda.
Genuine listening — the kind that changes conversations, builds trust, and surfaces information that would otherwise remain hidden — requires something different. It requires suspending your own agenda long enough to actually receive what’s being offered.
What Changes When You Actually Listen
In practice, leaders who develop genuine listening capacity notice several things.
People tell them more. Not because they ask differently, but because people sense — correctly — that what they share will be received rather than processed.
Decisions improve. Because the information available to the decision is richer, less filtered, less distorted by the hierarchy of what people think the leader wants to hear.
Trust deepens. Because being genuinely listened to is one of the rarest and most powerful experiences a person can have in a professional relationship.
Coach’s Reflection: The next conversation you have today — try an experiment. For the first three minutes, listen without preparing your response. Notice what you receive that you would otherwise have missed.
Call to Reflection: When did someone listen to you — really listen — in a professional context? What did that feel like? And how often do you offer that to others?
Yatish Chandrasekhar is an Executive Coach and Leadership Consultant at The Yogi Compass. He works with senior leaders across industries to help them discover their True North. If this resonated, he’d love to hear from you.