To be a great leader, you need to become a great listener. Here are 3 skills to master

I used to have a manager who worked for me and would often come to me with a tricky problem to be solved. We would go to a conference room and she would explain the details. I would ask a few questions, but would mostly listen. After about ten minutes, she would jump up, having solved the problem herself and exclaim, 'Thanks, you really helped me!' I didn't have any answers, but my listening helped her find them. One thing I've noticed teaching undergraduates is that we train people to give answers, but not to ask questions and listen. By the time they reach my classroom, my students have had an impressive history of academic achievement and will likely go on to prestigious careers. Yet most will struggle with what is perhaps the most important leadership skill for both business and life: listening. The truth is that leaders rarely get to make decisions that have quick, easy answers. Anyone can handle those. To handle genuinely difficult issues, you need to learn to be a great listener. Here are three listening skills that are easy to learn but take a lifetime to master: | Kevin Sharer was a tough, strong-minded leader. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, he rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant commander before entering corporate America. Following stints at AT&T, McKinsey, MCI, and GE, he joined the biotech firm Amgen, where he eventually became CEO. Looking back, he wrote: 'My approach was: 'I'm the smartest guy in the room. Just let me prove that here, in the first five minutes.' I would even interrupt people and tell them what they were going to tell me, to save us time so that we could get to the really important stuff, which was me telling them what to do. And I got away with it. Then the company faced a major crisis. The FDA identified problems with Epogen, a treatment for anemia that accounted for a third of Amgen's profits. That led to restrictions on its use and a significant blow to the company. For the first time in its history, the company announced layoffs. 2,600 employees, or 14% of its workforce, would have to go. Sharer realized that his leadership style was a big part of the problem and vowed to do better. Every semester in my class at Wharton, we play a video of him explaining how he changed. He said that he learned to listen for comprehension—not to critique, object, or convince—but to understand the information being put in front of him.