Leaders must be attentive to the yearnings of their team members. They must be good listeners. They must listen to their team members if they want to succeed. This is not a soft skill or a nice-to-have leadership quality. It is fundamental to the survival of any leader. Make time to hear out your team members and listen to their aspirations.

A general must visit his lieutenants to know their desires and get feedback of events in the battlefield. Without this intelligence, he is simply a man in a tent moving pins on a map, completely disconnected from the reality his soldiers face.

In the early 2000s, the Finnish giant dominated the mobile phone market with over 40% market share. Meanwhile, engineers within Nokia had developed a touchscreen smartphone prototype years before the iPhone launched. They saw where the market was heading. They tried to communicate the urgency to senior leadership, but the executives were not truly listening.

They were too invested in their existing business model, too confident in their market position. When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Nokia’s leadership was caught flat-footed. By 2013, Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft at a fraction of its former value. Thousands of employees lost their jobs. That simply was the cost of not listening.

The effectiveness of your leadership is dependent on the depth of your listening. This is the uncomfortable truth that many leaders refuse to accept. You can have the finest strategy, the most innovative products, the best-funded operations, but if you are not listening deeply to your people, you are building on sand. How well do you know about activities in your ecosystem? You cannot be kept abreast of development if you are not listening to your team members. The irony is that the feedback from the operational team must be used to frame your strategy. You can’t get a workable strategy if the team on the field are ignored.

Many years back, as a Regional Sales Manager, I ensure I visit all the states under my management every month. This enables me to meet the Field Sales Managers in each state and also interact with the distributors and retailers alike. This was more valuable than analyzing spreadsheets and sending emails demanding higher numbers.

The visits to the team members gave me the opportunity to listen to their challenges and success stories. It also helped to know more about the competitors and their activities in the trade. If I had been demanding higher numbers without understanding the building blocks of those numbers, the request may end up as a mirage.

There was the story of a head of department at a leading pharmaceutical company. She made it a point to hold weekly one-on-one meetings with each of her team members, not just to discuss work but to listen to their personal and professional goals. This practice not only boosted morale but also led to innovative ideas that propelled the department forward.

By being a good listener, she created a culture where everyone felt valued and heard. Her receptiveness to feedback made her team members feel comfortable, and they kept coming to her with their thoughts and concerns. If he had dismissed their feedback, she could have stifled communication and hindered growth.

Moreover, understanding your team members is not merely about hierarchical communication but also about fostering an environment where everyone feels their voice matters. Executives and team leads must regularly check in with their employees to glean insights into their experiences and ideas.

This approach is mirrored in the practices of leaders like Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks. He famously engaged with employees by visiting stores, discussing their experiences, and soliciting their feedback on company initiatives. His intentional listening helped Starbucks create a culture where employees felt valued, which in turn translated into enhanced customer service and loyalty.

How well do you know your team members? You cannot know your people if you do not listen to them. This is where many leaders get it wrong. They believe that reviewing performance metrics, reading status reports, and attending quarterly reviews means they know their team. They do not. Those are snapshots. Listening gives you the film, the context, and the story behind the numbers.

Be a good listener! But understand what good listening actually means. It is not passive. It is not simply waiting for your turn to speak. Good listening is active, engaged, and demanding. It means asking follow-up questions. It means paying attention not just to what is said but to what is left unsaid. It means noticing who is not speaking up and creating space for those voices. It means suspending your need to be right long enough to understand what you might be missing. Do not cast away any feedback. Even when a complaint seems trivial or emotional, dig deeper. There is always sense found in nonsense.

Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.