You Need This Skill for Career Success (and it’s not what you think)

I personally don’t know anybody that doesn’t want to be a career success.

But if this doesn’t describe you, no worries. You can check out another post here.

For the rest of us, let’s get into it.

Career success can be measured in many ways. You might only consider yourself a career success if you become wealthy. Or if you are well respected as the go-to expert. For others, like me, career success may be a combination of financial comfort, professional respect and time for family and friends.

No matter your vision, I am almost sure that you won’t get there if you don’t listen well.

Note to self: This statement excludes cases of corruption, nepotism and spells.

We think we listen well. Or well enough. Like we think we drink enough water. But do we really?

“If you don’t listen to me…”

For my part, I thought that I listened well, until my daughter showed me otherwise.

As she’s older now, we have full-fledged conversations. I loved our interaction. And I thought she did too.

Until one day, we were talking and she said abruptly, “If you don’t listen to me, I’m going to stop talking to you!” I was flabbergasted. And confused. Dad came into the conversation then, so we never really addressed her statement. But I played the conversation over and over in my mind because it really bothered me. Until I got it.

I interrupted her when she spoke. I didn’t look her in the eye for most of the conversation, because I was tired after a long day at work. I asked leading and closed questions, not open ended ones. I didn’t engage with her feelings.

No wonder she thought that I wasn’t listening! Because I really wasn’t doing a great job at all. I felt like a complete failure as a parent. And resolved to do better.

My darling taught me a valuable lesson: listening requires complete mind and body engagement.

It’s important to observe body language and engage with the other person’s emotions. Only then can you truly understand. And the person you’re listening to? They must feel heard. Like you really get where they are coming from.

More thinking

When I continued to reflect on this lesson, I realized something. Listening is critical for the health of every relationship, not just personal relationships.

Looking at my career failures with this perspective, I could clearly trace every one of them to an absence of listening or poor listening.

True story: I had a boss once who, even though she hired me, never liked me. I now wonder whether her dislike was fundamentally rooted in the fact that I never really listened to her. For example, I honestly cannot tell you any of her likes or dislikes or her views on anything really. My main memory of her is that she was always well-dressed, but that’s it.

(I was young and foolish friends. Don’t hold it against me please).

And that job represents one of my biggest career failures. I had zero growth opportunities, very little competency development and absolutely no mentoring from her.

Conversely, when I examined my career highlights, I could trace every one of them to great listening. Like when I answered the problem that my client didn’t know she had because I paid attention and listened. Or when I was able to step up in that important client meeting with relevant information, because I was listening.

As far as I’m concerned, listening is the number 1 requirement for career success.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s test my theory against other prevailing views of indicators of career success.

How does listening affect career success?

Let’s look at a few concepts which have been touted as connected to career success.

Traits of Successful People

Network science opines that if you know many diverse people, you are more likely to be successful in your career. According to the theory, this is because you’re exposed to different ideas, which fosters creativity, gives you a more accurate world view and makes you better at atypical problem-solving.

But I think that if you don’t listen to the people in your network, it’s just as good as not having one! How can you know what ideas other people have if you don’t listen to them?

In a previous post, I wrote about my observation that being vulnerable and connecting with people seems to be a predictor of career success. Vulnerability here means each person’s willingness to step into situations with an uncertain outcome with a huge possible gain or a huge possible loss. Again, if you think about it, that has to do with listening.

You have to put yourself out there by making yourself emotionally available in order to listen well. And you do that not knowing what the person will say or do. That’s a version of vulnerability to me.

The ability to learn effectively from failure is also attributed to career success. Just check out this study. One half of this trait is adaptability and flexibility. But the other half is observation, that is, knowing why you failed in the first place. Sometimes, the answer is obvious.

But when the reason for your failure is not obvious, you need to listen. Listen to the people who didn’t buy your product or service. Listen to the people who didn’t invest in your business. Understand what they are saying, what they are not saying, and adapt.

Problem Solving for Career Success

Success in business is dependent upon finding an effective solution to people’s problems. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or you work for someone: if you don’t solve the problem that you were hired to do, you probably will not last very long.

Effective and efficient problem solving makes you relevant, relatable and richer. Because most people are willing to pay you if you can do that for them.

Just listen to some of the biggest entrepreneurial voices in business today. Almost all of them had a problem, couldn’t solve it with existing offerings and therefore created a solution.

• What to Expect is one of the biggest maternity and child care publication brand founded on one mother’s inability to find all the information in one place when she was expecting her first child.
• Houzz is one the one of the most recognized online brands for home renovation and interior deisgn. Its founders were frustrated with the lack of online resources while they were renovating their house .
• Imgur was built out of one man’s frustration that there were no good online resources for hosting images on Reddit.

And successful businesses back in the day weren’t slow on this either. The first female self-made millionaire, Madame C.J. Walker, solved her hair loss woes and then made $$$ by solving the same problem for other women.

And I could go on and on.

Problem-solving requires you to connect with people.

In Dale Carnegie’s bestseller, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, his sixth tip for making people like you is “Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.”

Just like you want to talk about yourself, other people want to talk about themselves too. Let them! Become genuinely interested in other people and their business problems. Because that’s where you come in as a likable problem solver. If you don’t listen, you might not know what the problem is in the first place!

I realized that I have been doing this “let people speak thing” with my clients for a while. The only way that I can solve their problem is to let them speak. Only after I understand their problem, their perspective and their desires can I then attempt to resolve their issues.

The bottom line is simple: listen carefully to understand your clients’ and colleagues’ problems in order to provide a solution.

Listen, process and think first; then speak.

Leadership and Listening Well

Listening can be empowering and encouraging to co-workers, whether you are leading them in a supervisory role or not.

If you’re in a leadership role, you might be surprised how many people solve their own problems while you’re listening to them. This study seems to suggest that employees who perceive their supervisors as listening well have more positive feelings towards their job and employer. No wonder. When I think about it, the best boss I ever had listened to me.

As an employee, listening well to your boss could even improve your relationship. You may be clashing because you have different communication styles, as compared with having different views. Active listening could help sort through those communication differences and improve your relationship.

Basically, listening well could actually be a key indicator of career success.

It can help you become aware of a wide range of issues, resolve those issues and connect with people, whether clients, employees or managers.

You shouldn’t wait to become dehydrated to drink water. You also shouldn’t wait to suffer a failure or embarrassment in your career or personal life to realise that effective and active listening is life-giving. Try it and let me know how it turns out!

Until next week, go forth and be awesome.