Makiko Shinoda: "Listening" is Effective for Management

2021/07/13

After stepping down from my previous job, I spent a year wandering around, calling myself "jobless." Whenever I met acquaintances, they would ask, "What are you doing next?" and I would answer them earnestly. As I repeated these dialogues with many people, I felt my thoughts gradually becoming organized.

What was happening there was simply that people with no vested interests were listening carefully to what I had to say. If you think about it, when we speak, we sense the listener's attitude and unconsciously adjust what we say. Conversely, because they listened to me in that way, I was able to speak honestly about myself, including my flaws.

Through this experience, I learned that the quality of communication changes dramatically depending on how one listens. When we want to improve communication, we tend to focus only on "how to speak." We don't pay attention to the other side, which is "listening," even though "listening" has so much power.

Just as I was getting excited about the potential of "listening," I encountered my current workplace, YeLL Inc. The company contracts with corporations to provide a service where external personnel conduct weekly 30-minute online 1-on-1 meetings with employees.

For example, even when a business owner tries to implement a strategy, things may not go as planned. The owner might give pep talks and assign personnel to increase momentum. The reason results still don't appear is that the "brakes" are still on—such as a weak sense of ownership on the front lines or concerns about consistency with the past.

When an entire organization receives YeLL's 1-on-1 sessions, there is always an "outsider" who listens, allowing people to talk about their true feelings and the future. This has the effect of loosening each individual's brakes. The source of ownership and motivation hidden deep within the individual is put into words, and through dialogue, the direction of management becomes a personal matter. Individuals change, and the organization changes from the inside. I was moved by how "listening" supports business promotion, and I decided to join them.

YeLL aims for an increase in "organizations that listen to each other," for "listening" to spread throughout society, and for everyone to become more like themselves. The society YeLL aims for is the society I want to live in and a future worth leaving behind. Toward such a future, 30 years after graduation, I have just embarked on my first early-stage venture (adventure).