by Wahidabi Sulaiman

Created on: July 25, 2009

Well, it is by nature that we should listen more and speak less. That is why we are born with two ears and only one mouth. Following this rule of nature was to help the communication between individuals to be effective. All the more, it is one of the very important feature of a great leader. Leaders make a very important part of all society. It is a necessary factor that without a leader, no civilization can move forward. However, who decides what makes a good leader. I can safely say that a leader understands the stand of its community and is able to lead with keeping the community in mind. For this, the leader need to be informed about the community concerns. Also, the leader should be able to single out sub leaders to help him lead the community.

Good communication skills is essential for a great leader. And communication consists of both speech and hearing abilities. If you do not speak well, no one is going to listen to you. If you go back in history and read about great leaders, they all had great ability in hypnotizing the audience with the power of their speech. Also, from history, you would realize that all the revolutions took place because the rulers or leader of the community were not listening to what their community was trying to communicate. Therefore, speech coupled with listening skills would enhance the leadership of any leader.

Keeping an open mind would enable a leader to focus a lot on listening to his fellow community members. There are many types of negative leadership style that do not follow this rule. Therefore, these leaders end up as oppressors instead of nurturers. An example would be of a leader who micro manages everything. This type of leader do not give much room for participation. This is so because the leader is more focused on managing and managing every single detail of the community that he is paranoid. Paranoid that if he do not do things his way, his leadership would be questioned and the community would overthrow him. As such, he never listens to his members . In fact, he never gets the chance to listen. now you would have an idea of how much listening would help a leader enhance his leadership.

A great leader is one who is confident and always looking to improve his community. He would want ideas and brainstorming sessions as a very important aspect in his everyday lives. There are many leaders who go out to meet its community dwellers in disguise to find out how they are living and how his decisions are effecting his community. These type of leaders know how important it is to go down to the level of the normal people and listen to their woes and concern if they need to improve on anything.

Good listening skills would enable the leader to identify the concerns in his rulings and the need to rectify the necessary. Also, good listening skills enables the leader to address the matters that is of great concern to the majority of the community faster. Apart from being able to enhance the leadership, good listening skills also has another advantage. It helps to earn the respect of the community. Moreover, the community would love the leader.

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