Good bosses listen: communication as the most important leadership task

Key figures come from people

A good business idea and hard work are not enough. A company only becomes successful when the people in it work well together. That matters more to me than any key figure, because the key figures grow out of it. Harmony in a team has little to do with company parties or mission statements on the wall. It comes from something far less spectacular: a boss who listens, explains and gives reasons for decisions.

Hence my thesis: communication is the most important leadership task, because every other one depends on it. Anyone introducing something new, be it a piece of software, a new structure or a new product, has to listen, explain and build acceptance. Change only works with people, not against them. Anyone who dismisses this as sentimentality should look at the figures.

What the figures from Germany say

The polling institute Gallup has measured every year since 2001 how strongly employees in Germany feel attached to their employer. For 2025, 1,700 employees were surveyed by telephone. The result: only 10 per cent feel highly engaged emotionally, 77 per cent barely, 13 per cent not at all. Only 23 per cent believe their management will master future challenges. Gallup puts the loss of productivity caused by disengaged employees at between 119 and 142 billion euros a year.

What is interesting is how Gallup describes good leadership. Good managers ask their staff for their opinion and listen to them, they recognise strengths and place people where they can use them. That sounds banal. But the figures show that it apparently happens rarely. Anyone wondering why their own workforce is doing the bare minimum will often find the answer not in the salary table but in the boss's diary.

Poor communication costs you staff

A survey by the software provider Staffbase among 3,574 employees in six countries, 1,067 of them in Germany, provided a further indication in February 2025. Among the German respondents considering a change of job, 41 per cent name poor communication as an important reason. At the same time, respondents regard their direct manager as the most trustworthy source of information in the company, ahead of the intranet, email and senior management.

Taken together, the picture is clear. Employees want to hear from their boss what is going on, and they leave if they are not told. Anyone who delegates communication to the HR department or to a tool gives away the one channel people trust. And anyone surprised that the resignation rate is rising even though the pay is right has probably not asked anyone how things are going for quite some time.

Listening is more than nodding

In 2021, researchers led by Avraham Kluger interviewed 41 bank employees to examine when people feel heard at work. The result is uncomfortable for managers. Attentive nodding during a conversation is not enough. Employees feel heard in two ways: either the conversation itself moves them forward, because the boss asks questions, picks up on ideas or does not shut down difficult topics. Or the conversation is followed by action, for example a new tool, a change to a process or a visible consequence.

People feel unheard, by contrast, when the boss is unavailable, brushes objections aside without giving reasons, or listens politely and then does nothing. This last variant is particularly insidious, because it feels like leadership and yet breeds cynicism. The consequences according to the study: those who feel heard contribute more ideas and stay. Those who feel unheard say less, make less effort and start looking elsewhere.

What Google learned about teams

Over two years, Google studied 180 of its own teams to find out what sets high-performing teams apart from the rest. The most important factor was not the composition, not the experience of the members and not the size. It was what the researchers call psychological safety: the shared belief within the team that you can ask questions, admit mistakes and suggest ideas without being shown up for it.

The recommendation to managers follows accordingly: actively seek out opinions, show curiosity, ask plenty of questions. That is nothing other than communication as a leadership task, only backed up with data. A boss whose first move after a mistake is to look for the culprit will not receive any more reports of mistakes in future. He will receive surprises.

The counter-arguments

The most common counter-argument is this: a managing director has no time for endless conversations, he has to decide. That is true, and listening does not mean government by assembly. It means that the decision is taken after the listening and is then explained. Anyone who decides without having asked often decides on the basis of false assumptions and is later surprised by the resistance during implementation. The time saved at the front comes back at the end with interest.

The second counter-argument: communication cannot be measured, revenue can. That too is only half true. Absences, staff turnover and resignation rates can certainly be measured, and Gallup calculates that emotionally engaged employees are absent 41 per cent less often than disengaged ones. The third counter-argument is the most honest one: some bosses simply do not enjoy listening. That is a question of character, not a management problem. But then someone else should be leading.