Transcript: “Listening Time” Episode 24

Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. I'm Conner from polyglossa.com, and
you're listening to Episode 24 of the Listening Time podcast. If this is your first time
listening, I'm glad to have you here. This podcast is meant and designed for English
learners who want to improve their listening skills. So, if you can already understand a
lot of English, but you can't quite understand native speakers who are speaking fast at
normal speed, then this podcast is perfect for you, because in each episode of this
podcast, I speak about one or two topics, and I speak in a natural way, using natural
words and natural expressions, but I speak a little bit more slowly and a little bit more
clearly than the average native speaker speaks. So, you should be able to understand
me a little more easily than you can a normal podcast made for English speakers.
But the goal with this podcast is to help you reach the level where you can
understand me really easily, and then you can eventually move on and listen to those
podcasts made for English speakers. Also, remember that the transcript is available for
each episode, and you can access that in the Details part of the episode. That should
be a good tool to help you understand words or phrases that you missed the first time
around. So, I always recommend listening to each episode multiple times: maybe one
time without the transcript, and then with the transcript, and then without again, just to
practice in this way until you can understand everything that I say without the transcript.
Okay, so today, we're going to talk about leadership. This is a good topic to talk
about because I think that many people want to be good leaders and have good
leadership qualities. So, this should be a fun topic. Before we start, remember to sign up
for our $1 Listening Practice Seminars at polyglossa.com and check us out on all of our
social media accounts. And also, share this podcast with anyone else who might find it
useful, and if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, give it a like, a rating, a review, and let
the world know what you think about this podcast. Alright, let's get started.
Okay, so first of all, what is a leader? So, a leader is someone who leads,
influences, and guides other people. If you're a leader, this means that other people
follow you. You're an example for other people. So, obviously, a leader has a very
important role in their group of people. So what are some examples of leadership roles?
The word "role" refers to some position or some responsibility that you have. This is a
role. So, first of all, there are professional leaders. For example: a boss or a manager.
This could be a leader. I think most of us have had a boss or a manager at some point
in our career, or maybe you're a manager or a boss, so maybe you're this type of leader.
And another type of leader is a team leader. So, maybe you don't have the title of
manager or boss, but maybe you work with a group of people, and maybe you're the
leader of that group. So, in certain industries where many people work in teams, there's
usually one person, that kind of leads this team. They might earn more money, or
maybe they don't. But they have greater responsibility than the other team members.
So, a team leader is a type of leader, of course. And then one other type of leader in the
professional world could be a teacher. So, a teacher can lead his or her students and
help guide them so that they can learn. And if you work in a classroom environment,
then you definitely need to lead because there will be many other people with you who
are looking at you as their example.
 So, there aren't only professional leaders, there are also leaders in other areas of
our lives as well. For example, if you're a parent, you're a leader, right. You have to lead
your family. So if you're a father, and you have two children, for example, you are the
example, you are the person who is guiding these two people. They look to you as their
example, and they hopefully follow you. So, a parent could be a leader. And then among
your friend group, you might notice that one person plays the leader role. That might be
you or that might be one of your friends. So, maybe one of your friends is the person
who always suggests an activity for you guys to do. Or maybe that person always
makes decisions for the group, or tells the group what they should do. This would be a
leader as well. So, there are many different types of leaders in our everyday lives.
And there are also a couple different leadership styles. I'm only going to talk
about two of these general styles. We hear these words a lot. There are "hands-on"
leaders and "hands-off" leaders. A hands-on leader is a leader who is very involved in
the activity. So, maybe they also do some of the work, or maybe they help you do the
work. Of course, I'm talking about a leader in a professional environment, right. Maybe
your manager always checks on your work, and they check to make sure you're doing
things right. Maybe they help you out. Maybe they're always there to answer any
questions you might have or give you advice. This is a hands-on leader.
And then there are hands- off leaders. A hands-off leader is someone who
prefers not to participate too much in the activity. So for example, maybe your manager
tells you what you need to do. They give you a task to do, but they let you do the task
by yourself, and they don't bother you. They just leave you alone and let you work. But
maybe after a while, you go and report to them and tell them how you're doing, or
maybe they come by once in a while and see if you have any questions or doubts, or if
you need any help, but they don't hover over you. When we use the phrase "hover over
someone" in English, we mean that the person sticks very close to you, and watches
what you're doing, and monitors your work or your progress, etc. When someone does
this, we say that they're "hovering over you". So, a hands off leader, definitely doesn't
hover, right. He lets you do your work, and then he'll probably check it afterwards. So,
leaders can be hands-on or hands-off or maybe they're somewhere in between.
Okay, now let's talk about some good leadership qualities. So, what do leaders
need to do? What characteristics should they have in order to be good leaders? So, I'll
talk about five different qualities. The first one is the ability to motivate followers, or
motivate a team. Right. So, if a leader is not able to motivate the people that are
following him. He's not a good leader, because obviously the goal of a leader is to help
his team accomplish some goal, right, complete some task. And if they're not motivated
to do this, then the leader isn't doing his job. Right.
So, the ability to motivate people is very important. I've recently been watching
some documentary style videos about Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great was a
very important historical figure in Ancient Greece, and more particularly in Macedonia,
and he was known as being one of the greatest war leaders of all time. Right... maybe
the greatest of all time. So, one quality that he had was that he was able to motivate his
army in battle. And one thing that I found interesting about him was the way he
positioned himself when he went to war with his army. So, at that time, kings often went
to war with their armies, right. And many times, the kings, or the most important person,
they would be towards the back of the army, or maybe in the middle, and they would
give commands, and they would allow the soldiers to go ahead of them and fight.
So, many of their soldiers would die before the enemy could even reach the king
or the important person. Right. This was a very common way for kings to go to battle
because of course, you don't want your king to die in battle. So you want him to be well
protected. However, Alexander the Great often led his army from the very front. So, he
actually went first, and he led the army, literally. Right. They followed him into battle. And
from an objective point of view, this might not be the smartest thing, because if you're at
the very front, you're more likely to get killed. Right. But Alexander the Great, he never
showed any fear, and he did this in battle.
So, even though this is probably not the smartest move, objectively speaking,
this actually really motivated his troops. The word "troops" refers to soldiers, right, the
people in the army. So, the fact that he was at the front really motivated his troops,
because they saw that he was willing to die in battle. Right. He wasn't just sending them
to go die, he was at the very front. So his people definitely followed him, right. This
really motivated them to go into battle. So, I thought that was a really cool example of
how to motivate people, right, to show that you are part of the team. You're not just
sending people different places to go do things, you're actually one of the team
members. So, that's the first leadership quality that's important to have.
And then another one is good communication skills. This is an obvious one,
because if a leader can't communicate well, no one will follow that leader, right. So, the
leader needs to have good people skills, as we say in English. He needs to be able to
identify with people and read people and interact in a way that makes people want to
work with him. Right. So, if a leader can't do this, then his team members probably won't
trust him or they won't understand him as well or they won't understand the goal or the
mission. There are many negatives that could result from bad communication skills.
And the third quality that leaders should definitely have is self-awareness. When
we say "self-awareness" in English, we're talking about the ability to understand how
other people view you. So, for example, if someone is not very self-aware, this means
that they act in a way that shows that they kind of don't care how other people perceive
them. They don't even think about this. They just act however they want. But if someone
is self-aware, then they try to put themselves in other people's shoes, as we say in
English, and they imagine how other people might perceive their actions. So, this leader
might think, "Hmm, maybe I shouldn't do this because if I do it, it seems arrogant or it
seems selfish, so I'm not going to do this action". This type of reflection shows that this
leader is self-aware. He knows how people perceive him and how they might perceive
his actions.
So, that's another really good quality to have because if you're not self- aware,
and you're a leader, you probably don't realize how people perceive you, and they might
think you're a jerk. Right. We use the word "jerk" in English to refer to someone who
isn't nice. They're mean. Maybe they're a bully. They're not very nice, and they don't
consider other people's feelings. So, If you're not self-aware, you might be acting like a
jerk, and you don't even realize it. So, that's not good if you're a leader.
And the next quality is empathy. So, empathy refers to the ability to imagine,
understand, feel, and identify with other people's emotions or feelings or thoughts. So, if
you can really feel what other people are feeling, you have the ability of empathy. You
are an empathetic person. So, a good leader needs to be able to put himself in other
people's shoes and imagine how they feel. Right. Imagine what their struggles are.
When we say the word "struggle" in English, this refers to having trouble or difficulty
with something. If I say "I'm struggling in my math class", I'm saying that I'm having
trouble or difficulties in my math class.
So, if you're empathetic, and you're an empathetic leader, you'll be able to
understand your team members' struggles or the other people's struggles. You'll
understand their fears, you'll understand their desires, and you'll show them that you
acknowledge this. People like when their leader is empathetic, because oftentimes,
leaders don't show empathy, and it seems like they don't even care about how you feel.
I remember in my very first job, I had a boss who was not empathetic at all. And I
distinctly remember on one occasion, I had a really big problem with my work, but it
wasn't my fault. Someone else had made a huge mistake, and it was affecting me in my
duties. The word "duties" in English just means your tasks, your responsibilities, the
things that you have to do.
So, someone else had made a huge mistake, and now I couldn't complete my
work on time. And I told this to my manager, and he was completely un-sympathetic and
un-empathetic to my feelings, or my position. He just told me, "I don't care. Do it
anyway." And I remember I was so frustrated when he said that to me. I couldn't believe
that he couldn't see that it was impossible for me to complete my job because of this
huge problem that someone else had caused. So, this manager showed no empathy,
and I remember him as being a very bad boss. So of course, if you don't have this
quality, people probably don't like you.
And then lastly, another good leadership quality is the ability to delegate. The
word "delegate" means to assign responsibility to different people. Right. So, if I'm a
leader and I have three team members, and there are six tasks that we need to
complete, I might give two tasks to each of those members. Right. I'm delegating those
tasks to my team members. So, a leader needs to be able to delegate because a leader
can't do everything by himself. He needs to use his team members to get the job done.
So, if you're a leader and you're not good at delegating, you're probably not going to be
efficient in your work. You're probably not going to finish things on time or meet
deadlines, and it will be a frustrating experience for everyone. So, the ability to delegate
is definitely a skill that good leaders need to have.
So lastly, let me just ask you a question. Do you think that some people are born
to be leaders, and some people are born not to be leaders? Or do you think that
leadership is something that you learn during your life? Do you think that being a good
leader is a natural quality that people are born with because of their personality? Or do
you think that anyone can become a good leader if they learn how to lead and adopt
these essential skills? People probably debate this topic, and some people might have
different opinions. I think it's a mixture of both. I think that some people naturally have a
personality that drives them to be a leader. But I think that everybody needs to learn
how to lead other people. If you don't learn how to do this, you're not going to be a good
leader even if you have the right personality type. So, in my opinion, it's a mixture of
both things.
Alright, so we'll stop there for today. Hopefully this was an interesting topic for
you. And hopefully it was good practice for your listening. So, remember that you have
the transcript available in the Details part of this episode. So, make sure to access it
there if you need it. And of course, remember to share this podcast with anyone else
who might find it useful, and if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, give it a like, a rating,
a comment. And remember to sign up for our $1 Listening Practice Seminars at
polyglossa.com. So, thank you for listening to this episode and I hope you'll come back
for Episode 25 of the Listening Time podcast.

*IMPORTANT: This episode was recorded a while ago, and I don’t use the Polyglossa
website anymore. Now, you can access my Listening Practice Seminars by becoming a
member at www.patreon.com/listeningtime