You Learned Active Listening. But Not Listening.
- annaknieriem
- Mar 23
- 5 min read
Last Sunday, I was sitting in a church.
My son had asked me to go with him. I am not particularly drawn to church, but I went for him. And then I sat there and found myself crying throughout the entire service. Not just slightly emotional. Actual tears. I could not explain it. Afterwards, I spent a long time thinking about it. I remained puzzled.
Later, I told a close colleague about it. She listened. She did not ask many questions. She did not analyze or interpret. She simply listened. And at some point, while I was talking, something became clear to me. The place had told me something I do not hear in my everyday life: you are good as you are. You do not have to perform.
And I had not even known why I was crying.
I am someone who analyzes. I ask questions. I try to understand things. I did everything I could to make sense of it on my own and got nowhere. Not because I lacked willingness, but because it required another person who was truly listening.
And I do not mean someone who is applying active listening techniques.
Active Listening in Leadership Is Not the Same as Listening
You nod. You paraphrase. You ask follow-up questions. You let the other person finish speaking. You do everything you have learned in a seminar or read in a book about active listening in leadership.
And still, the other person does not feel truly understood.
This is one of the most critical patterns I observe in organizations. Not the leader who does not listen at all. Not the leader who immediately jumps to solutions. But the leader who listens technically well, while the other person still leaves the conversation with the feeling: they did not really hear me.
This is dangerous because the leader believes the issue has been resolved. They do not understand why employees do not follow through. Why change initiatives fail. Why important information only surfaces when it is already too late.
The answer is not better technique.
Stephen Covey described this principle decades ago: seek first to understand, then to be understood. Millions of leaders have read it. Yet the pattern persists, because the issue is not a lack of knowledge.
What actually happens while you are listening?
Be honest.
You hear someone speak, and at the same time you are already formulating your response. Or you are categorizing what you hear into your existing mental model. Or you are thinking about the next meeting.
This is not a personal flaw. It is how the human brain operates when it is not actively trained otherwise. Active listening as a technique addresses the surface. It forces you to signal attention. But it does not fundamentally change what happens in your mind.
What Real Listening Space Means in Leadership
My colleague did something in that conversation that I only understood afterwards.
She was present. Not performing presence. Truly there. Her facial expressions, eye contact and body language all signaled: I am here to listen. This is not about me. When she asked something, it was only to help me articulate what I had already sensed but not yet put into words.
But this did not start in that moment.
It started much earlier.
Over time, she had created a space of trust. I knew that I would not be judged, criticized or dismissed. That is why I went to her in the first place. And it is why I could say things in that conversation that I had not even been able to articulate to myself.
This is what real listening space means in leadership. It is not a technique you apply in a conversation. It is a space you build over time through consistent behavior. A space in which people can actually say what they really mean.
Otto Scharmer describes four levels of listening in his Theory U, from downloading, where we only hear what we already know, to generative listening, where something new emerges through the conversation. Most leadership conversations stay at the first or second level. Not because leaders lack intention, but because deeper listening requires a space that first has to be created.
And it requires something else.
A willingness to hear things you may not like. Things that challenge your assumptions. Things that create more work. If the other person senses, consciously or not, that you do not truly want that, you will receive a filtered version. A safe answer. The version you are ready to hear.
If You Don’t Truly Listen, You Solve the Wrong Problem
Imagine you are having a conversation with an employee about a team issue. You listen. You nod. You ask questions. In the end, you agree on a solution.
Three weeks later, nothing has changed.
What happened?
Most likely, your employee did not tell you the actual problem. Not because they were dishonest, but because they either did not fully understand it themselves yet, or because they sensed that the space for it was not there. So they gave you a version you could both work with. And you developed a solution for a problem that was not the real one.
This is not primarily a question of trust in a broad sense. It is a question of everyday leadership behavior. How you react when someone says something uncomfortable. Whether you explore further or immediately interpret. Whether you allow incomplete thoughts to unfold or fill the gap yourself.
Google’s Project Aristotle identified psychological safety as the most important factor for team performance, more important than strategy or structure. The key question is whether people feel safe to speak openly.
Real listening space is how psychological safety becomes tangible. Not as a concept, but in every single conversation.
If you do not truly listen, you diagnose incorrectly. You solve the wrong problem. And then you wonder why the solution does not work.
What Changes When Real Listening Space Exists
I still do not listen perfectly. There are conversations where I notice that I am already several steps ahead while someone else is still speaking. Moments where I am forming an answer instead of being fully present.
The difference is that I notice it now. And I understand the cost. For the other person and for what happens next.
What has changed is that I have become slower in conversations. Not passive. Slower. I leave more things uncommented. I ask different questions. Not to gather information, but to help someone complete their own thinking.
And I build space more consciously. This means being consistent in how I respond when someone says something uncomfortable. Listening even when what is said is difficult. Not evaluating at the same moment I am trying to understand.
It sounds obvious.
It is not.
You have learned active listening. But listening itself – what happened in that conversation with my colleague, and what happened within me afterwards – is something else. It is the willingness to truly arrive. Not to give a better answer, but to enable the other person to ask a better question of themselves.
This is not a soft skill. It is a core capability for leadership effectiveness and organizational culture. It is the condition that allows the right problems to become visible in the first place.
References
Covey, Stephen R. (1989): The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Free Press. — Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Scharmer, C. Otto (2009): Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. — Vier Ebenen des Zuhoerens: Downloading, Faktisches Zuhoeren, Empathisches Zuhoeren, Generatives Zuhoeren.
Google re:Work (2016): Project Aristotle. Verfuegbar unter: g.co/rework — Psychologische Sicherheit als staerkster Einzelfaktor fuer Teamleistung.
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