IF YOU WANT TO LEAD, LISTEN FIRST
We were all born with two ears and one mouth for a good reason. And it isn’t because nature just happened to have a second ear lying around that it decided to stick onto our heads.
No, the reason we have two ears and one mouth is that it’s far more important to listen than it is to talk. That’s true for everyone, but it’s especially true for great leaders.
Great leaders take the time to listen—to partners, employees, advisors, and customers. In my case, I’ll go talk to the people at the blackjack table or someone playing slots. A chat in the trenches can tell you a lot. You’ll probably hear a fair amount of bullshit, but even if you get just one piece of useful information, you’ll be a better leader. And the more you do it, the better you become at separating the useful from the useless.
Solid leaders know everyone has something of value to contribute, so they make sure they give everyone the time and attention needed to truly be heard. That’s because they know they’ll become a better leader by listening.
This comes back to a central idea I’ve been emphasizing throughout this book: know what you know, and know what you don’t. It’s a form of personal honesty that every great leader embraces. They know what they know, and what they don’t know, they’re ready to learn or rely on others for that knowledge.
It’s been said that great leaders surround themselves with people much smarter than they are. Do you then tune out and ignore these people? Of course not. When you assemble your team, ensure that every person has something of value to contribute. I use this exact strategy.
At the same time, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t listen to your instincts. Far from it. Use your instincts and rely on them, particularly when you’re listening to others. Your instincts will let you know what’s good advice and what’s not.
Or, for that matter, what is accurate and what is inaccurate.
But back to advisors for a moment. Now’s a good time for me to share one of my pet peeves about business. To put it mildly, I’m not the biggest fan of hiring consultants. For one thing, they can be expensive. Many base their work on trying to make themselves increasingly indispensable—the more you work with them, the more you need them, and the more they get paid. No thanks!
“Consultants can consult you straight out of business.”
Additionally, bringing an outsider into your business can often be counterproductive. Granted, they may offer you an objective perspective, but that’s what you have other advisors for in the first place. Moreover, no one can possibly know more about your business than you and those who work with you every day. I see so many CEOs using consultants as a crutch.
Being a good listener also has many other advantages. Not too long ago, I had a meeting with managers and others who were in charge of several of my larger hotels. They were discussing a promotion in which hotel guests would receive 15 percent off the price of their stay. And they wanted to market it with the phrase “15 percent off BAR.”
If you don’t happen to be in the hotel business, when you hear that you would probably assume that phrase meant 15 percent off your tab at the hotel’s bar. But that’s not what we were trying to say. In this context, BAR refers to the price of the accommodations (the stated price of the room, or “best available rate”).
Good thing I had been listening as closely as I had been. I reminded them to keep things simple.
“Guys, you all are putting hotel lingo in here,” I said. “Somebody’s going to walk into the bar and say, ‘Where’s my 15 percent off?’ You may know that means your rate at your hotel, but they don’t.”
Listening to people around you means that you don’t have to necessarily agree with or act on what other people tell you. Far from it. But at the very least, by taking into consideration what others have to say, you’re giving yourself the best chance to make the smartest decisions possible. You’ve gained insight into some areas of your business that may need improvement. You’ve broadened your perspective, and that is never a bad thing to do.
Being a good listener helps a leader avoid insider business speak when communicating with the public. Sometimes a business is so inwardly focused that it overlooks times when it’s using language that only its employees understand. Listening well cuts off that mistake before it can become a real problem.
I don’t have many rules about the give-and-take with the people I meet with every single day. But I do have one I stick to religiously: never, ever hand me any bullshit. I can take good news, I can take bad news, but never try to dance around me with words whose only purpose is to hide or sweeten the truth. If you have something to say, just say it. I’m blunt with the people I work with, and I expect that kind of bluntness from them in return. Don’t ever walk into my office and talk bullshit, because I will most definitely call you on it. That’s because bullshit is, more often than not, easy to smell a mile away.
Here’s an example. Some time back we had a restaurant in Oklahoma that, for whatever reason, wasn’t performing well. I asked regional management what was going on. Well, said one, it’s because there are “professional diners” in Oklahoma City.
I looked at him and said, “Excuse my bluntness, but what the f***?”
It was one of the craziest, most obvious bullshit comments I’ve ever heard in my life. Oklahoma City has “professional diners”—what does that even mean? What’s a professional diner? Why is it exclusive to Oklahoma City? Cities like Houston, Austin, and Tulsa don’t have professional diners.
To this day, I still don’t understand what the hell he was trying to say. But in many ways, it doesn’t matter. It was a bullshit answer, totally lacking in truth. I’d never heard such crap in my life. People are people everywhere. They expect good food and good service at a reasonable price. Obviously, we weren’t doing that.
“Don’t show a head in the bed if it’s not there.”
One of our sayings with regard to our hotels is “Don’t show a head in the bed if it’s not there.” That is, don’t play games with how many rooms you’ve sold on any given night. That’s blunt and to the point, and that’s the kind of bluntness I want from myself and everyone with whom I work. Being a good listener means you know what makes for good communication. Being blunt makes for efficient, clear-cut communication.
Being a good listener also cuts both ways. The best leaders listen closely to feedback they receive about their leadership skills. From there, they take it to heart to become better leaders. This comes back to the issue of being blunt—if you’re blunt with the people you work with, don’t just allow them to be blunt in return. Embrace it.
I’ve seen businesses on Billion Dollar Buyer where great products were essentially undercut by leaders who wouldn’t listen to what their people had to say about their leadership style. I remember one business in particular where the business owner refused to believe that her leadership skills and interactions with others were the problem, even though comments from others labeled her “bossy,” “silly,” and “sophomoric.”
In the end, I decided not to do business with that entrepreneur. And her leadership style was one of the primary reasons.
Committing to listening also doesn’t mean you have to spend all day listening to others, particularly when they’re going on too long or wandering endlessly off topic. If someone’s not communicating clearly, ask them to make themselves clear. If they’re blunt, it shouldn’t take that long.
Speaking of efficiency, that’s why I make it a policy to always have meetings that are as short as possible—ideally, fifteen minutes or less. Of course, we go over that time limit often, but trying to impose some sort of time restriction generally cuts back on the average time spent in meetings and keeps the time in the meeting productive. That, and we work to keep those short meetings consistent in how we review our business. That helps everyone prepare better to make the most of those few minutes.
The reason I believe so strongly in short meetings goes beyond the fact that everybody hates long, drawn-out sessions. A short meeting also promotes bluntness and accountability. If you’re only asking people to focus for fifteen minutes or so, they bring their A game to those fifteen minutes. A lot gets done because it’s focused and on point. The goal is to make them all focus for fifteen minutes and know that you’re listening to them. Get to the point and get out.
Keeping meetings short is also valuable to reinforce an organization-wide commitment to ongoing goals and priorities. For instance, since I’ve emphasized the value of hospitality, no matter the business, short meetings are an ideal way to reiterate that message. Use short meetings to remind everyone and to emphasize everything from the specials for that day to production and delivery priorities. Keep it short and on point, and the message is easy to convey and understand.
“People who ask questions are often the smartest in the room because they have the humility to ask about what they don’t know.”
As I said, I value people being blunt with me and vice versa. But, by the same token, I have no problem at all with someone telling me, “I don’t know.” I’m fine with that—it’s blunt and to the point. I’d much rather hear “I don’t know” than someone concocting some bullshit story. And I’m even finer with it if the person who says he or she doesn’t know adds, “But I’m going to find out.”
This comes back to the value of humility. None of us have all the answers, and the leader who recognizes that is well on his or her way to becoming a truly great leader. They’re comfortable with someone telling them they don’t know something, because they know they don’t know everything themselves.
A leader who listens is also a connected leader, one in touch with his or her business and the people with whom he or she works.
A great leader also needs and wants to stay involved with his or her business, no matter how big the business may get. And to stay involved, my advice is always the same: keep your hands dirty.
By that, I mean stay committed to doing whatever is necessary to help your business succeed. It’s never too small or trivial. In my case, if I walk into one of my establishments and see a candy wrapper on the floor, I pick it up. If I walk into one of my hotels and see a chair out of place, I always put it where it belongs.
The message here is, don’t change who you are. If you see a problem, get involved. And that applies whether your business has grown by leaps and bounds or you’re just starting out and having to do a lot yourself. Stay true to yourself.
LISTEN!
As a leader, never make the assumption that just because you told someone to do something, it’s going to get done. That’s one of the biggest lessons I have learned and that I share all the time. When you start out in business, make sure to follow up so that things are being done the way you want them done. And keep following up.
I did that myself, starting with my first business, and it remains true to this day. In fact, not too long ago, I was getting off the elevator at my Post Oak Hotel, when I passed a room service cart on the way to a room. When you’re handling a room service order, lots of things can go wrong and, even worse, you can’t just run back to the kitchen to get ketchup or a lemon that was left off the plate. So I always take the opportunity to look for things that aren’t right.
I stopped the room service person. I looked to make sure the check was okay, which it was. The whole presentation on top of the cart looked good too. Then I asked to see the food.
The room service person took off the cover. Underneath was a burger that had no garnishes—no lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, nothing. It was just a hamburger bun with a burger and nothing else. It didn’t meet my standards.
I went nuts. It was the worst presentation I had ever seen in my life. If I were at another hotel, I’d be laughing at them, but this was my hotel—The Post Oak—a Five Diamond hotel and one of the finest in the world, where they do 99 percent of everything right. But not this time.
I immediately took a picture of the food and shared it with the general manager of the hotel and the executive chef. The hotel had been winning all these awards left and right, and then we go and do something this stupid . . .
Like I said: never assume anything, even at a Five Diamond hotel. That’s what I did there, at a place where you assume everything’s going to be perfect. And it’s the same thing I did some thirty years ago.
The goal is to stay involved at as many levels as you possibly can, right down to details that someone else might see as meaningless. Some business owners might see a piece of trash on the floor and figure it’s not the end of the world—or wait until someone else does the dirty work and picks it up.
That’s certainly not me, and I don’t think that’s you either. You want to be involved and are constantly looking for opportunities to stay involved.
The example I used earlier is being able to see a burned-out light bulb from forty thousand feet away. Many people might never even see that or, if they did, decide it’s not important. But to me—and to almost every entrepreneur or business owner committed to succeeding—nothing is trivial, ever.
Think about what people, leaders included, look like when they’re hard at work. They have their heads down. That’s good—they’re concentrating and focused. But it also pays to lift up your head once in a while and look around to see what’s going on. Keeping your head on a swivel keeps you from missing anything of value.
And when you lift up your head, take the time to listen as closely as possible.
TILMAN’S TARGETS
• Take the time to listen to everyone. A great leader listens all the time.
• Be blunt with the people around you and expect them to do the same.
• Keep meetings short. Short meetings help people focus.
• Stay involved in your business as much as possible.
• Don’t assume anything.