Lend Your Ears

Listening is a mandate for leaders; not just a much-needed skill.

- Dr Smita Dabholkar Singh

The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

—Sam Walton

Two years ago, YourCare, a pharmaceutical company shifted its manufacturing plant to a location 20km away from its existing one. Most of the employees had spent more than a decade with the company and had bought houses in the vicinity. A change in the workplace location was unexpected and its announcement created a lot of anxiety and restlessness. Kalyan, the plant head, had anticipated this. So he immediately started having one-to-one interactions with the employees, including those at the shop floor. Bharat, owner and chairman, had announced this change through the ‘From the Chairman’s desk’ column in the company’s monthly online newsletter.

Kalyan had a terrific rapport with the employees. An engineer by training, he was groomed by great mentors who taught him the nuances of managing people early in his career. He knew that managing people started with observation, listening to the said and unsaid, and understanding it; this would slowly help one predict their behavioural patterns and help manage situations better eventually. For doing all this, he was told, one needs to develop the habit of being with people. This was a major challenge to a young introvert like Kalyan. However, over a period of time he successfully tackled it.