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Leadership tends to be associated with confidence, decisiveness and having good ideas. Listening gets rather less attention, despite its ability to challenge assumptions, reveal knowledge that might otherwise be overlooked and change the way problems are understood.
After more than 30 years working across conservation, international development and technology, some of the most useful lessons I’ve encountered have come not from arriving with the right answers, but from discovering that the original question was wrong. Conversations with people whose experiences challenged my assumptions gradually changed the way I thought about both leadership and social change.
Listening in this sense is more than waiting for a turn to speak. It allows somebody else’s experience to reshape an existing understanding and leaves open the possibility that an established view may need to change. That can be particularly valuable in fields such as international development, where solutions conceived far from the communities they are intended to help can easily overlook knowledge and approaches that already exist locally.
