The second Big 6 principle is the one almost every leader underestimates.
One of the finest Army leaders I ever observed in my military career was Lieutenant General (Retired) Don Holder. He helped lead the Army’s doctrinal shift toward decentralized operations and empowerment, and in doing so he shaped generations of leaders. But what I remember most about him goes beyond the doctrine to what he did when he visited a unit.
He went first to the junior Soldiers. He asked lots of questions. He took notes, and he never interrupted their answers. That was his leadership approach: a senior commander listening to the most junior people in the formation as if their answers mattered. They did.
The effect was dramatic. Morale in those units skyrocketed, and an exchange of ideas became part of the culture. Soldiers who never expected to be heard started offering what they knew. And General Holder came away from those visits with something no briefing slide could have given him: the ground truth about his command.
What looked like simple courtesy on those visits was in fact one of the most impactful leadership tools I had ever seen.
Listen: The Skill Nobody Teaches and Everybody Needs
Most leaders file listening in the wrong drawer as a soft skill — a courtesy, something covered in a seminar years ago. But I have come to treat it as a strategic advantage, more valuable in many ways than capital or talent, and this series is about why that is true and how to build it.
In We’re All In I described listening as arguably the most difficult leadership skill to master. Consider why. We are rarely taught to listen. My mother tried to teach me better, saying “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason,” but I violated her thoughtful guidance for years.
Listening also seems unimpressive. It appears far more commanding to be eloquent, so we polish our transmitting and neglect our receiving. And we never codify the benefits. Almost no company measures the true cost of the re-dos that happen because instructions were not clearly understood the first time.
Stephen Covey once famously asked, “Are you listening or just waiting to speak?” I spent most of my career doing the latter. The Army magnified that weakness by placing enormous emphasis on how we transmitted messages and far less on how well we received them. It took me years, and some painful lessons, to learn the difference.
What a Listening Leader Gains
Think about what General Holder was collecting on those visits by really listening:
- People closest to the work see problems long before they reach a dashboard.
- Trust, because nothing tells a team member their voice matters like a leader’s undivided attention.
- Alignment, because you cannot correct a misunderstanding you never hear.
- And better decisions, because the buy-in and creativity we gain from soliciting the input of others is worth far more than anything we can offer by just transmitting.
Listening operates in several dimensions. We listen to individuals. We listen to our teams, whether a section, a crew, or a department. And we listen across the enterprise. A Level Five Culture of Commitment is characterized by leaders who practice all of these skills continuously.
Most successful senior leaders spend at least half of their day listening to the views of their teammates. That time is never lost, because that’s where informed judgment comes from.
The Cost of Ineffective Listening
Now look at the other side of the ledger. In Nametag and Follower cultures (Levels 1 and 2), leaders mostly transmit. They parrot what their boss told them, rarely circle back to confirm understanding, and mistakes multiply because people do what they thought they heard. Initiative dies quietly and quickly in those organizations. Good ideas are never sought, so opportunity passes by.
The cost is measurable even in a single message. In The Power of Being All In I quoted Nick Morgan, author of Can You Hear Me?
“Ninety percent of the time, people think their emails and texts are understood by recipients, but the messages are understood only fifty percent of the time.”
Half of what we think we communicated never landed.
We have fooled ourselves into treating the transfer of information as communication, and the two are very different things. Real communication is confirmed understanding, but confirmation only happens when someone listens.
That is the strategic case. It is also why Listen sits second among the Big 6, right behind Set the Azimuth. The clearest Azimuth in the world fails if leaders never hear how it is being understood. This is where All-In Adaptive Leadership stops being a philosophy and becomes a daily discipline.
Below, I walk through how to conduct the quarterly Azimuth Review meeting itself, the scorecard I use to measure progress on the Key Tasks, and the cadence discipline that keeps the review honest quarter after quarter. To read the rest of this article, visit this link.
Enjoy the journey!
