“I’m just here to listen.”

Those can be the most important five words a leader can say when they enter a new role—or safest and most passive. No question, one of the first steps a leader should take with a new association, new team, or new board is to hear out what people have to say. A “listening tour” can surface the kind of issues that are lurking within an organization, and being the new person leaves you well-positioned to hear them.

But listening involves more than just calling a meeting and listening to complaints. A lot of intentionality is necessary to make that listening tour matter.

Writing at the MIT Sloan Management Review, CEO coach Sanyin Siang, notes that a leader on a listening tour will have to be attentive to some subtle cues that suggest dysfunction. Defensive, meandering answers may reveal “where processes or communication has broken down”; silence may require you to prompt people to speak honestly; and conversations should reveal not just what isn’t working but what matters most to them. “Your team isn’t looking for a leader who merely hears them,” Siang writes. “They’re looking for a leader who understands them.”

But that understanding is just half of the challenge. Signaling to people that you’re listening is one thing; demonstrating that you’re going to do something with what you’ve heard is another. In an Associations Now Deep Dive in 2024, nonprofit consultant Candance Chow stressed the importance of ending the tour and taking the next step. “I think sometimes new EDs [executive directors] prolong that period of listening and learning a little too long to the point that the team isn’t really sure actions are going to be taken,” she says. 

(How long is too long? That depends, but Chow suggested that going four months without action is probably pushing it. “You can always say, ‘Here are my early thoughts. Here’s what I’m seeing.’ Within four months, you should have some viewpoint on where the organization should go. Much longer than that, you’re going to start losing people.”)

Indeed, leaders should enter these listening exercises with an awareness of when and how they’ll act on what they’ve heard. “You have to be prepared for hard truths and to act on what you hear. It’s not a box-checking exercise. If you don’t mean it, don’t do it,” Lorna Borenstein, an executive and author, told SHRM last year.

I suspect, though, that leaders have an easier time taking action than they do listening to the kinds of statements that might contradict their assumptions. When an association leader speaks with staff, volunteers, and members, it can be easy to key in on the statements that validate preexisting assumptions, and reject the rest. As Siang notes, leaders have to enter conversations looking for more than just information. “A narrow focus on information can play into confirmation bias,” he writes. “We end up hearing what matches the assumptions we arrived with.”

New leadership roles are an excellent opportunity to learn what your people are looking for. It’s also an opportunity to adjust how you hear.