A Navy expert: 21st century leaders need to communicate by listening as well talking

From a recent talk at the Naval War College by Rear Adm.
John Kirby:

The
whole debate over strategic communications ignores the reality that we live
increasingly in a participatory culture. People aren't waiting to lap up our
messages anymore. They don't want access to information. They want access to
conversation. They want to be heard. Ours is a post-audience world where we can
no more control the narrative than we can control the weather.

What
we can do is find ways to take part in that conversation, to inform it, even to
guide it at times. But that requires a certain humility that I worry we don't
always possess. It requires us to listen as well as to speak, to solicit as
well as to inform, to be willing to admit of our own shortcomings and accept
sometimes brutally frank feedback.

...
The point is that I know my credibility -- and that of the Navy -- is enhanced
when I endeavor to join a discussion rather than to lead it. That can be a hard
thing for us to do, letting go of leadership a little. But in this brave, new
world of instant communications letting go actually means getting ahead.