To become a leader, learn to shut up

To become a leader, learn to shut upTo become a leader, learn to shut upAs executivesmove up the ranks, mora people pat their backs, and less people give them unfiltered real talk.Employees can become too aware of the boss power and privilege, telling CEOs what they want to hear and becoming fearful of telling them aboutactual failures. CEOs can get cocoonedby yes-women and yes-men giving them only good news.Thats a big problem. Without all the right information, CEOs cant make the necessarydirectional changes needed to guide the company.This cocoon of good feelings is what the latest issue of Harvard Business Review tackles in an illuminating story called Bursting the CEO Bubble. HBR interviewed 200 top executives to figure out how they could learn whatU.S. defense secretaryDonald Rumsfeld famously coined, unknown unknowns.The first and hardest step become humble.For top executives to succeed, HBR says they need to leave the spaces of power that theyve been striving for all their ca reers Todo what your exalted position demands, you must in some way escape your exalted position.Talk less, ask moreTo get ones employees to give you the right answers, you need to start asking them the right questions. The framing of the questions is key.The CEO of Charles Schwab,Walt Bettinger, regularly checks in withemployees, owners, analysts, and clients, and hell make a point to ask them, if you were in my job, what would you be focusing on? Its designed to make it less about him, and more about them, so they are more likely to volunteer their real opinions.Bettinger will also publicly admit in these meetings that his hardest challenge as CEO is his isolation and he needs help.And Bettingermakes relevant information, both good and bad, pay off. Certain employees who bring Bettinger useful information get flown out to spend a day at Charles Schwabs San Francisco headquarters as a public signal to further encourage these good feedback loops.Leave the officeThe worst way you can find out that your company has been operating on misguided assumptions iswatching your competitors capitalize on them.If you dont want that to happen, you need to find the people on the ground, who notlageice early signs of trouble. That means leaving your cocoon, because those observant employees are rarely sitting in the corner office.HBR offers an example Fadi Ghandour, the co-founder of the Dubai-based delivery firm Aramex, tookone of the companys couriers because he wanted to find out how Aramex was directly affecting them. He asked his courier questions about the job, and outside of the executive comfort zone, the courier was able to getreal and tellGhandour that he was being overloaded with work and that managers were acting out of touch. Ghandour immediately called an all-hands meeting with management and some couriers. He didnt make the meeting a witch hunt where people were called out, but rather, a meeting of mutual discovering of how workflows could improve.As a result of that encounter, all Aramex executives must do stints as couriers.Make failure acceptableOne of the core characteristics of good teams employees feel safe in failing, so that not every mistake becomes an attack on their job security.Encouraging failure means encouraging creativity and new thinking, so it means letting go of your ego and becoming honest with how little you, as a leader, may know.As Ed Catmull,the president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, puts it,to be wrong as fast as you can is to sign up for aggressive, rapid learning. At orientations for new employees, Catmull tells them right off the bat that neither he nor the company has all the right answers.The founder and CEO of Spanx, Sara Blakely, makes failure acceptable by talking about her own. In a recent companywide meeting, she held a celebratory moratorium on her oops moments that shed personally made withSpanx.Bequieter soyou can be a better listenerFor CEOs who need to shake hands, fundraise, TED Talk and broadcast words of authority in most of their interactions, being quiet is not their default. But making space for those quieter moments is critical for good listening.Being quiet for a while displays generosity - a key leadership trait - that lets other people express themselves and have a stake in the conversation. Everyone already knows youre important, because you have the title. Let someone else have the floor and see what you can learn from them.The president of RD at Calico,Hal Barron, explains that listening means not just waiting to hear the story in your head because you shouldnt know what the story is yet. If youre talking, as the saying goes, youre not learning.For Cirque du Soleils co-founderGuyLalibert, this means not stopping brainstorming sessions. When others in a meeting are skeptical of someones wild ideas, hes the one in the meeting who encourages them to keep talking.That encouragement is the kind of mantra Simon Mulcahy, a Salesforce top executive, repeats t o himself in meetings, Dont tell. Ask questions. Dont tell. Ask questions.Anyone can do thisBottom line? These actions are all doable. HBRs advice is not just for CEOs but every kind of leader get out of the office today and spend more time being wrong, being uncomfortable, and being quiet.