I have worked with many CEOs in my 34 years of consulting, not only in dentistry, but also in hospitals/hospital systems, insurance companies, clearinghouses, biotechnical firms, and a few Fortune 500 companies. To get to the CEO level in any enterprise you need to be good. A good manager, a good leader and good strategically and tactically. You need to understand your business, the industry, how to successfully interface with the board, the senior executives, the market, and industry stakeholders. As the CEO, you need to produce results through others and move the enterprise so it continues to be viable as the future unfolds. You need to build solid structures and processes that yield desired results.
That’s what good CEOs do. Great CEOs also do this, but they have an additional characteristic that is often not present in “just” good CEOs: Great CEOs know how to listen in four dimensions while good CEOs listen in only three dimensions, and it is the fourth dimension of listening that distinguishes great CEOs.
The first dimension of listening is the lowest level, it is listening from what “you already know”. Confirming or denying what is being said. Reconfirming your judgements, assessments, evaluations and verdicts you have previously made. In our work, we have named this listening as your “already, always” listening. You are only listening to yourself. You are listening from the inside – out. The mind is closed. If a CEO can only listen at this level, he or she won’t be a CEO for long.
The second dimension of listening, what Otto Sharmer calls “factual listening”. You are taking in new data. You may in fact be ‘dis-confirming’ what you already know. You have an open mind. You are listening from the outside – in. New data is heard. You can notice differences between what you think and what is being said. Most good CEOs can and do listen at this level.
The third dimension of listening is what has a CEO be ‘a very good CEO’. It is an ability to recreate not only what is being said, but what is behind what is being said. You can not only hear the explicit, but you can hear the implicit. You can hear between and behind the words. You can see through the other person’s eyes. You can stand in their shoes. It is a level of empathetic listening where the person feels heard. This level of listening is why really good CEOs generate levels of relationships of loyalty, commitment and kinship with his or her executive team.
My experience in the field is that many dental CEOs are only fair to midland at this level of listening. They are quickly sucked back into the first level of listening – they already know the answer and are going to give it to you.
The fourth dimension of listening is the one I find the rarest among dental CEOs. Steve Bilt, Doug Brown or Bob Fontana are examples of great CEOs in Dentistry. In other industries I can say Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson are also great CEOs. The fourth dimension of listening is the fundamental reason why they are so successful.
The fourth dimension of listening is an ability to listen to the other person such that an emerging future appears, or a new possibility arises. Not a future that was previously thought by either party. You and the other become a conjoined entity, like great dancers on the floor, in total harmony and rhythm, a single element. There is a total disappearance of “you and me.” There is a shift in identity of both parties. The ability to listen at this level is the difference between good and great CEOs.
To train a dentist-entrepreneur how to listen at dimensions three and four is not easy. Personality, family systems, culture, ego, being open to coaching, as well as many other factors are at play. But to be a great CEO you need to have the capacity to listen powerfully at level three and four. Unfortunately, not many can do it. If you can’t provide level three and four listening, you will never be a truly great CEO.
Coaching – if you are reading this and saying to yourself “that is what I do”, then you are listening at level one and two, and not listening at three and certainly not four.
References: We use a combination of Dr. Otto Sharmer’s, NLP and Landmark Education’s Communication models of listening in our work to define these four dimensions of listening.
