Otto Scharmer, a professor of leadership and management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that listening is key to leadership, but not just any kind of listening. He differentiates between “downloading,” which is when we only hear things that confirm what we already know; “factual listening,” when we filter what we hear in search of new data and evidence; “empathetic listening,” which puts us in the shoes of the speaker, connecting and feeling what s/he feels; and finally, “generative listening,” in which we enter almost a meditative flow state, which enables us “to connect to the
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