Knowledge Base · Leadership
What is a listening tour, and how do I run one?
A listening tour is a deliberate round of conversations where the leader asks open questions and only listens, no convincing and no defending. Chapter 7 of the book shows a plant manager suspending his own plan to run one, discovering the real reasons for resistance, and ending with a better solution the team owned.
A listening tour is a round of conversations whose only purpose is understanding. Chapter 7 of the book tells the story it comes from: a plant manager whose new shift schedule, perfect on paper, met furious resistance from senior operators. His first instinct was enforcement. Instead, he paused, suspended the schedule, and held small group listening sessions with no agenda beyond hearing the team.
What surfaced barely concerned the schedule's mechanics at all. The schedule wrecked childcare arrangements, pushed commutes into the worst traffic, and, underneath everything, the operators felt disrespected: the experts on the process had not been consulted at all. None of that was visible in the plan, and none of it would have surfaced in an argument.
Run yours the way the book's exercise sets out. Invite one or two of the people most resistant to the change. Use the book's open starters, in your own words: help me understand your perspective on this, tell me your biggest concerns, and walk me through how this lands on your daily work. Then practise what the book calls CI-LENCE: do not convince, do not defend, do not interrupt. Your only goal is to understand their world.
The story's ending is the reason the tour works. Armed with what he heard, the manager scrapped his plan and gave a working group of operators the problem itself. They designed a better answer, a standardised digital handover log with a five-minute overlap, and because it was theirs, it was implemented without a single complaint. Listening did not delay the change. It is what made the change possible.
Related questions
- How do I overcome resistance to change?
- What is intentional silence, and why would a leader use it?
- How do I get a sceptical manager on board with continuous improvement?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 7 (Pitfalls to Avoid in Continuous Improvement Initiatives).