Making people feel seen, heard, and understood is one of the most fundamental and important skills of a coach. In our work over the past decade, we’ve come to believe that it’s also one of the most important, yet underdeveloped, skills of a leader. This skill, though simple, is surprisingly lacking in our day-to-day human interactions. To develop it is radical. And, when leveraged in a leadership context, the skill can transform you into a source of inspiration for your people.

But what does it mean to make people feel seen, heard, and understood? Why are leaders getting in their own way? Leaders could stand to listen and ask more questions, but first they have to recognize the mistakes they make when they THINK they’re doing exactly that.

Focusing on your experience
This is what happens inside your head while you’re having a conversation with someone. They mention something, and your mind jumps to something you want to say. Perhaps you had a similar experience you want to share, or you thought of an idea worth offering. The point is now you’re focused on what’s in your head rather than on the person in front of you. You’ve stopped seeing or hearing the other person.

Asking information-seeking questions, not exploratory ones
Questions are often designed to be information-seeking rather than designed for exploration. We spend our lives in school training ourselves to ask the questions that will lead us to a concrete answer. But making people feel seen, heard, and understood isn’t about knowing when the task is due, or determining whether they’re where you think they should be in the process. It’s about recognizing they are naturally resourceful and probably have the answers inside themselves,  and bearing witness to their process.

Asking yes/no or leading questions
Often leaders will phrase a question, but its answer is simply a yes/no response. How many times have you been in a meeting where the leader asks, “Are there any questions?” This question warrants nothing more than a yes/no answer. People take it as the invitation it's intended to be, however, because of the way the question is worded it requires several additional mental leaps. This can slow down the conversation enough that people haven't quite formulated their question before the leader moves on. Other times, yes/no questions are really just suggestions veiled as a question. “Did you try reaching out to Jim?” “Are you going to give it another week?” “Were you annoyed?” These kinds of questions can be at best, leading, and at worst, toxic. They take your conversation partner down a train of thought that isn’t their own—it’s yours. They didn’t reach out to Jim… now they have to tell you about their failure to do so. Eek! They hadn’t been annoyed, but now that you planted the idea in their head, they subconsciously take it on.

Solution-finding
The most insidious mistake of all is one that feels so helpful and useful—how could it possibly be a mistake? This is the habit of solution-finding. Believe it or not, most of the time when people come to us with a problem, they’re not actually looking for a spoon-fed solution. Instead, they want to be recognized in their struggle and challenged to think in new ways. They want to know that you have a fundamental trust in their capacity to figure things out of themselves… they just need help with where to look.

Now, as a leader, sometimes each one of these actions are relevant and necessary to do your job. The key is acknowledging that these behaviors are NOT the ones that contribute to your people feeling seen, heard, and understood. To be an effective, engaging, and inspiring leader, you just have to be intentional about creating the time and space with your people to truly listen and ask powerful, exploratory questions. This is additive to the other hats that you will wear in your role, but crucial to making your people feel seen, heard, and understood.

Stay tuned for Part 2 for classic tips from the world of coaching that you can leverage in your role as a leader to do just that.

What do you see as common mistakes that can get in the way of your leadership?