Listen to understand. Understand to communicate. Communicate to lead. Listening is more than remaining silent. Understanding is not the same as agreeing. Communicating implies sharing. All this, conceptually acceptable, is complicated and sometimes impossible at internship . In fact, Javier Fernández Aguado includes deafness in his book Pathologies in Organizations.

George Bernard Shaw said that the main problem of communication is the illusion that it has taken place. A check-up of companies confirms this and requires starting with Internal Communications which, to use a human simile, is like the intimacy of institutions. In the same way that communication lubricates or infects a couple, family or friends relationship, organizations invigorate or infect their internal environment, their collective spirit, their corporate soul.

Communication begins with listening, and thinking that one does so does not always match reality. A fact from the healthcare field may illustrate. James L. Hallenbeck analyzed 74 tapes of physicians' conversations with their patients: only 23% were allowed to fully describe their concerns. The average time they were able to speak before the first interruption was barely 18 seconds. Another work showed that the duration average of the conversations was 16.5 minutes, of which the patients used 8 seconds to ask questions. In addition, physicians believed they had employee a average of 9 minutes offering information, when that time was limited to 40 seconds.

Perceptions confuse us when they diverge from reality. Goethe reminded us that "it is not enough to know, it is necessary to want; it is not enough to want, it is necessary to do". Mutatis mutandis, many managers claim to listen; above all, they say. No serious business denies Internal Communications even if, de facto, it denies it.

Being exemplary has more impact than setting examples

A true leader does not trust the efficiency of his message to the mere fact of delivering it. Among other characteristics, the amount of information from senders and receivers is very disproportionate. Moreover, cataloging information as power blinds more than one, to the point of dying from an overdose of unshared knowledge . The pathological zeal to withhold information that is susceptible and desirable to communicate dynamites trust and mutilates growth. A Hewlett Packard (HP) executive famously said: if HP knew everything HP knows, we would be three times more productive. This shared knowledge , so useful at the bottom, should start at the top. Being exemplary has more impact than setting examples.

It goes without saying that sharing information calls for the limits of discretion and the judgment of prudence. Not being able to tell everything does not imply not telling anything. The prudent thing to do is to speak, when silence aggravates the status. The prudent thing to do is to remain silent, when talking makes it worse. Moreover, data is not enough. Strategic decisions need explanation because the empiricism of the data can distort reality, as can be seen in surgical communication for real lies.

Whoever informs can easily think that with a few lines or a speech the receivers will ipso facto grasp the content and, not least, the context. A recipe that usually works: few messages, clear and repeated by credible people. Repeating does not mean tiring or boring. Innovation and communication go hand in hand or not at all. Listening thus becomes the best filter to discern what to say/speak, how and when. It is also the clock that signals the time to activate the blinker that informs in time of a coming change.

The opposite extreme is also toxic because information saturation strangles. When everything is important, nothing is relevant; if everything is a priority, everything is secondary; when everything is new, nothing is news.

A clue core topic to get communication right is active and empathetic listening. In The leader as communicator Alan Akerson and Robert Mai point out that a good listener generates respect, strengthens relationships and reinforces trust. They also assert that the authentic leader is, in a way, predictable: he does not require his followers to guess what ideas underlie his decisions. This quality substantially reduces the issue of surprises and, if they occur, they are pleasant.

In short, the leader is as good a communicator as he is a listener. It is symptomatic that some companies have already appointed the Chief Listener Officer (CLO), the manager who listens. Today is a good day to launch a principle that time will tell if it matures into an aphorism: audio, ergo communico (I listen, then I communicate or share).