Listen Well, Lead Better

Authors: Steve & Becky Harling

Publisher: Bethany House

Release Date: January 7, 2020

Rating: 5 Stars

Reviewer: Jessica Higgins

Listening is a key component of good leadership and this book does a great job demonstrating the benefits.

Listening is a crucial action that everyone has the ability to do. Unfortunately, people don’t always view the true value of it. More focus is typically put on speaking skills and other actions, but so much more can be learned through simple listening. In Listen Well, Lead Better, Steve and Becky Harling outline different areas of listening that are beneficial to everyone. In addition, they also provide personal stories of what they’ve learned from listening as well as times when they didn’t listen. Scripture is also provided throughout each chapter to support the biblical truths of listening.

My husband is a partner in an engineering/architecture firm and has had the benefit of attending leadership conferences. He also read this book and said that it contains everything that is in multiple books that he has read. However, most leadership books have a chapter dedicated to listening and he liked that there was a book dedicated to the entire topic. He agrees that listening is very crucial to leadership. To resolve conflict between employees or to have a crucial conversation with a coworker, you need to really listen to understand what is going on. Not listening to respond but to understand. I love how this book gives questions to ask people that you may be a leader of as well as self-reflection questions. Sometimes I dread getting a book like this to review because I think it is going to be a slow pace, but this moved quickly and stayed interesting. This should be a book on every current and potential leader’s bookshelf.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within are my own.