Of all the skills that Liz writes about to help us all communicate better, this is the key. If the leaders in your workplace are not communicating, and we see how important listening is to that communication as well, the rest of the team is unlikely to be doing it well either. It’s a modeled behavior. When leaders are open to connection, listen carefully to their reports, and work toward clarity and agreement, that flows down into how the team interacts with each other. When leaders only ever issue directives with no consideration for the humans who report to them, you’ll see that same behavior across the team.