Leadership Is About Listening

When I first met Chandra Arya, the Liberal candidate for Nepean, he presented his view of how the team should precede with the day's work.  He then turned to me and said "What do you think, Peter?"  A simple, but powerfully inclusive statement.  It left me curious about the root of the power of this statement, and I've concluded that it was the element of listening.

Through the simple act of listening, Chandra achieved three of the most prized objectives of leadership:

• having those you are leading feel valued,
• empowering those who look to your leadership, and
• fully engaging your team in the work to be done.

So how can this be translated to the leadership on a national level?  

I would suggest the creation of Citizen Forums on a wide range of topics from innovation to social policy through the economy and jobs to sustainable development and the environment.  Citizen Forums would use a wide range of means to engage Canadians in the discussion moving from face-to-face town hall meetings through to the most advanced on-line collaborations. 

This level of collaboration is based on the belief that Canadians are creative and innovative and can collectively address the economic, social and environmental challenges before us.

If we engage people from all walks of life, the energy of this diversity will create solutions that were not previously envisioned.  By listening to Canadians, Citizen Forums will lead us to opportunities and solutions that go beyond political ideology by embracing what is positive from a non-partisan approach to policy on all levels.  A true leader has the confidence to allow for ideas that do not necessarily fit neatly into their existing political perspective - but this takes courage from a leader who is willing to take risks.

How can this practically be implemented?

Let's start by bringing back Katimavik, but with a slightly updated mandate.  Rather than just participating as volunteers, these young people would learn how to use existing innovative practices from the business world to suggest improvements to the programs they are volunteering in.  Think of teaching these youth Six Sigma approaches that they could apply to volunteer agencies.

How about using some of the crowd-sourcing methods employed by Kickstarter or Indiegogo? If a citizens' forum came forward with ten program enhancements to EI training programs, these ideas would be pitched on a citizens forum web site.  All Canadians would be encouraged to comment on and critic these program ideas.  The public service would be given the responsibility of compiling this information, providing a public report and passing this information to leadership. This would meet with significant cynicism initially, but leadership that embraces the best ideas and actually implements them would very quickly dispel such cynicism and build a tremendous creative momentum.

Apply these ideas to negotiations between the government and civil servants.  What would be the result of asking civil servants HOW sick leave could be changed to both make it more responsive to the needs of the civil service while still saving tax dollars.  

 

Let's start by asking citizens how they could use citizen's forums .

Personally, I believe Justin Trudeau has the foresight and confidence to be the leader to do this.