An Underrated Leadership Skill That Changes Everything

Plus, Steve Jobs on the Most Important Job of a CEO

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In today’s newsletter:

  1. 📖 An Underrated Leadership Skill That Changes Everything

  2. 💬 Steve Jobs on the Most Important Job of a CEO

  3. 🏫 Newsletter about AI: The Rundown

  4. 🧠 On Listening vs. Speaking

  5. ✍️ An 80/20 Tip You Can Apply Today

Read time: 4 minutes

THE ONE THING

1. An Underrated Leadership Skill That Changes Everything

In a noisy world, the most powerful leadership skill isn’t speaking—it’s listening.

A meta-analytic review of over 140+ studies, 150,000+ people, and 400,000+ observations found that good listening is strongly linked to better work results.

According to the study, listening well improves job performance by enhancing relationships, emotions, and cognition.

You can read the full study by clicking here

The takeaway

Leaders who actively listen to their employees at work build better relationships and improve performance. So start focusing on what your people are saying to get better results.

INSIGHTFUL THOUGHTS

2. Steve Jobs on the Most Important Job of a CEO

“The greatest people are self-managing. They don’t need to be managed.

Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it. What they need is a common vision, and that’s what leadership is.

I consider the most important job of someone like myself is recruiting.”

Steve Jobs

Watch the full video of him talking about the importance of hiring the right people here:

PRESENTED BY

3. Newsletter about AI: The Rundown

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by The Rundown, a newsletter that covers daily updates about AI tools and workflows. More details below.

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Their expert research team spends all day learning what’s new in AI and talking with industry experts, then distills the most important developments into one free email every morning.

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WORDS I LIKE

4. On Listening vs. Speaking

THE 80/20

5. An 80/20 Tip You Can Apply Today

Here’s a low-effort, high-impact tip you can use with your team today:

  • What: End every meeting with this simple question: “Who owns what by when?”

  • Why: This prevents vague action items and ensures accountability.

  • Example:

    ❌ “Let’s follow up on this next week.”
    ✅ “Sarah will send the revised proposal by Wednesday at 2 PM ET.”

Want more of those tips?

Check out my free Amazon Bestselling book called: Influencing Virtual Teams.

You can grab it for free by clicking the button and subscribing to the newsletter 👇️