What if membership sector leaders could listen more and act less?

Leadership is often measured by the decisions we make and the actions we take. But in the membership sector, could the real difference come from how well we listen before doing either?

Meetings. Decisions. Strategies. Deadlines. Another meeting.

Leadership can sometimes feel like a constant race to move things forward, solve the next problem and demonstrate progress, with very little time left to do something that sounds remarkably simple.

Listen.

And we don't mean listening while mentally preparing your response, glancing at your inbox or waiting for an opportunity to explain why something won't work.

We mean really listening.

For leaders across trade associations, professional bodies and membership organisations, this matters perhaps more than in most sectors, because the entire membership proposition is built around understanding, representing and responding to the needs of other people.

Yet here's an interesting question. How much time do we actually spend listening compared with deciding, directing and doing?

Busy listening. Or busy responding?

Research from Zenger Folkman, published in Harvard Business Review, challenges the idea that great listeners simply sit quietly and absorb information. Their analysis of 3,492 participants found that the strongest listeners were those who asked thoughtful questions, encouraged discussion and helped others develop their thinking.

In other words, listening isn't passive. It's an active leadership skill.

And that's particularly relevant in membership organisations, where leaders are constantly balancing competing priorities, from member expectations and commercial pressures to employee engagement, governance and long-term strategy.

It's easy to become so focused on delivering what we believe members need that we forget to ask whether those needs have changed.

Or to become so busy leading our teams that we miss what they're trying to tell us.

The risk isn't necessarily making the wrong decision. It's making a perfectly reasonable decision without hearing something that could have made it considerably better.

We asked some of our own leadership team.

At Membership Bespoke, we wanted to explore what listening means in practice, particularly when you're balancing leadership responsibilities, commercial decisions and relationships across the membership sector.

Here are five perspectives we'd love to share.

Dennis Howes | Co-Founder

"There's always pressure to move quickly and make decisions, but I've learnt that sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is listen properly before deciding what happens next. Particularly in partnerships, understanding what someone actually needs is far more important than arriving with all the answers."

Daniel Goddard | Co-Founder

"In recruitment, listening is everything. A client might tell you what they think they're looking for, but the real insight often comes from asking a few more questions and understanding what's happening behind the brief. That's usually where you discover what will genuinely make the difference."

Maura May | Marketing Director

"I think there's a big difference between listening to respond and listening to understand. In marketing, it's easy to get caught up in what we want to communicate, when actually the most useful insights come from paying attention to what people are telling us, including what they're not saying."

Anna Christofis | Interim & Temporary Recruitment Director

"Sometimes people don't need an immediate solution. They need someone to understand the situation they're dealing with first. Particularly when organisations are under pressure, taking the time to listen can make finding the right solution much easier."

Tom Lovell | Senior Leadership Team

"Good leadership isn't about being the loudest voice in the room. It's about creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas, challenging decisions and raising concerns. You often learn far more when you give other people the space to speak."

Five minutes of listening could save five weeks of fixing.

Think about how many challenges across the membership sector begin with an assumption.

  • Assuming members want more events when they're actually looking for more relevant professional development.

  • Assuming employees are resistant to change when they haven't been given an opportunity to explain their concerns.

  • Or assuming a recruitment brief is right because it's based on the role someone held previously.

Sometimes the most productive thing a leader can do is ask one more question - what are we missing?

  1. What would make this better?

  2. What haven't we considered?

  3. And perhaps the most revealing of all, what would you do differently?

None of these questions requires a new strategy, a bigger budget or another committee. Just a willingness to listen to the answer.

Maybe leadership needs a different kind of KPI.

We measure revenue, retention, membership growth, engagement and performance, and rightly so. But perhaps there's another question worth asking at the end of the working week. How many times did I genuinely change my mind because I listened to someone else?

Because leadership isn't just about having the confidence to make decisions. Sometimes it's about having the curiosity to discover that someone else has a better idea. And in a sector built around representing people, that's a skill worth making time for.