Active Listening Skills for Leaders (HR Consulting Tips) (Clone)

“Naught”. An old word for nothing, and my new favorite word of the year!! Picture the average leader in December. Cold coffee, a calendar with no white space, not smiling, calling out of work often, and the emotional weight of an entire department. Now picture that same leader in January, carrying all of it plus a shiny new set of goals.

We are great at building the "start doing" list. Nobody ever builds the "stop carrying" list. 😊

And it shows. Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace found manager engagement dropped from 31% in 2022 to 22% last year, and that leaders report more stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness than the people they lead. We are not tired because we lack commitment. We are tired because nobody told us we could put anything down.

I call this capacity erosion. Those who have attended our NavigatHR or Strengths training have heard me talk about this…. It is not one big crisis. It is the slow drain of carrying a little more every quarter until there is nothing left for the work only you can do. So, before you build the 2027 plan, build the drop list.

Why is Active Listening Important in HR?

• Drop the over-functioning. Someone hands in work that is 80% there, and it is faster to just fix it yourself. So, you do. Again. Congratulations, you own it forever now, and your team just learned they don't have to. Faster today is more expensive by March.

• Drop the bottleneck. If every decision runs through you, you are not the leader. You are the traffic light. Pick three decisions your team should be making without you, tell them out loud that they own those decisions now, and then, the hard part, let them make one differently than you would have.
• Drop the meetings nobody can defend. Find the recurring one where people show up on mute, do other work, and leave saying, "Well, that could have been an email." Cancel it. Not shorten. Cancel. If the world keeps spinning for three weeks, you just gave everyone back 12 hours.
• Drop the grudge from Q2. Every leader is carrying one. The comment in the meeting. The project that fell apart. The person you have quietly written off. You are the only one still holding it, and it is costing you a working relationship you will need next year.
• Drop the idea that you have to be good at everything. Leaders burn the most energy white knuckling their weakest areas. The ones who thrive build around what they do well and get honest about the rest. Your strengths are not a personality quiz. They are a strategy.

The drop list is not about doing less. It is about having enough left to lead well.

So, before the 2027 planning meetings start, ask your leaders one question, "What are you carrying that you should not take into next year?" Then be quiet and let them answer. You will learn more in ten minutes than in any engagement survey.

The goals will still be there in January. Let's just make sure you have the capacity to reach them. Carrying all of it into 2027? Naught!

If your leadership team needs help building its” drop list”, I'd love to help through coaching, facilitated sessions, or customized training. Let's lighten the load before January does the deciding for you.