Listen Like a Leader (Not a Know-It-All)

Do you confuse listening with waiting for your turn to talk?

Listening isn’t a soft skill it’s a strategic advantage. According to the Harvard Business Review and the Center for Creative Leadership, listening ranks as one of the most critical and underdeveloped leadership skills.  

We’ve all heard about “active listening,” but there’s a powerful dimension of listening that often gets overlooked: validation.

When people are navigating uncertainty or emotionally charged situations, emotions can cloud logic. Telling someone to “calm down” or “be rational” doesn’t help. What does? Helping them feel heard, accepted, and appreciated so they can work through what they’re feeling and move forward with clarity.

Validation helps meet three essential human needs:

• To be heard (not just listened to)

• To feel understood and accepted

• To be appreciated as a whole person, not just a role or problem

And here’s the leadership truth: when people feel heard and understood, trust increases, conflict decreases, and collaboration improves. Especially in times of change, this is a skill worth mastering.

Listening opens the door. Validation invites people to walk through it.

Listening is receiving information.
Validation is responding with recognition.

Together, they create an experience where people feel safe, valued, and seen. That’s the foundation for engagement and performance.

The Process of Validation

Use these five steps in your next one-on-one or team conversation:

1. Listen empathetically – Tune into the emotion behind the words.
2. Seek to understand – Clarify their perspective before offering yours.
3. Validate the emotion – Let them know their feelings are valid. Say, “That makes sense.”
4. Get curious – Ask, “How are you feeling about all this?” or “I imagine you might feel ___, is that right?”
5. Offer justification – Normalize the emotion: “Anyone going through that would feel frustrated.”

This isn’t about fixing, it’s about freeing people to process and move forward.

Here’s how you can start practicing validation this week:

• Notice before you judge. Pay attention to your own emotions and others’.
• Give your full attention. Eliminate distractions, including mental ones.
• Match their energy. Don’t go hyper when they’re hurting. Don’t go flat when they’re energized.
• Humanize the person. Imagine their story. Picture them as a child with hopes, fears, and potential.
• Avoid “I know exactly how you feel.” Instead try, “I sense that you may be feeling…”
• Resist advice mode. Unless asked, don’t jump in with solutions. Being present is powerful enough.

This week, consider the conversations you’re part of, not just the ones you’re leading. Are you showing up to fix or to understand? To steer or to stand with?

Validation transforms conversations, relationships, and leadership outcomes.
Try it. Practice it. And watch the impact unfold.

ACTION:

Choose one interaction where you will lead with listening.
Not to fix.
Not to advise.
Just to understand.

Afterward, reflect: What changed in the conversation because you truly listened?

“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”
— David Augsburger