When she was a little girl, her family had a lumber mill back in the mountains of western Pennsylvania where they made barrel staves. The family built this little lumber mill long before the Civil War began, in the 1840s. Nearby was a one-room schoolhouse that she and her father and grandfather had attended. Above the blackboard was a maxim that could have been from a McGuffey Reader; it had always been there. It was this maxim she had me memorize: "If wisdom's ways you would wisely seek, these five things observe with care: of whom you speak, to whom you speak, how, when, and where." I memorized that when I was eight years old. Years later I have to smile; the only time I ever get into trouble is when I forget my grandmother's advice about "these five things."

I thought of my grandmother again recently when I was interviewed by a writer working on an article -- on "the

Listening is one of the most effective ways of learning what the customer values. We listen to all our customers, all the people within the organization and those beyond the walls of the organization. And through listening we learn what they value. This is a critical skill and an indispensable attitude. When we learn this, it brings us to a higher level of understanding and appreciation of our own people and of those we can reach beyond the walls.

When we listen with total engagement, communication is not just saying something; it is being heard. And since

How do we foster listening in others? Listening is not a solo performance, it is a connection -- and is most successful when circular. I listen, you respond; you listen, I respond, and somehow in that magic circle of communication the messages are heard. The Great Stone Face is not exactly the most conducive face for good listeners; so we respond expressively.

Believing that the quality and character of a leader determine the performance and results, the success of our leadership depends on how effectively we mobilize our people around mission and values and vision, and how effectively all of our people listen to the customer. We are most successful when the communication is circular.

The writer interviewing me about listening asked what would be the one most important element, the one piece of advice I could share based on my own experience. Thinking of the management teams I've been part of, where positive feedback was key to growth and productive relationships, thinking through all the aspects of listening, of communication, rising to the top as number one was "banish the but." If we want people to listen, we must banish "but" from our vocabulary. How many times has someone told us how well we have performed -- and we were feeling good about the feedback, listening carefully -- then we have heard "but," and the positive, energizing part of the feedback was lost in the "but" and what followed it. "But" is nobody's friend -- listener or speaker. "And" provides the graceful transition, the nonthreatening bridge to mutual appreciation, the communication that builds effective relationships. Replacing "but" with "and" is the best advice I could give to the leader who listens and wants others to listen with an open mind.

There is another kind of listening -- listening to our inner self. Listening to the whispers of our lives is critical. If we don't listen to the whispers of our lives, we miss many messages. I have written elsewhere about three kinds of whispers (see "Putting One's House in Order," Leader to Leader, no. 16, Spring 2000). First are the whispers of the body, when our body tries to tell us that something is not quite right. The more intellectual we are the more we tend to ignore the whispers of our bodies. Then one day an illness emerges and we can go back to that day when there was this whisper and we blocked or ignored it. And then there are whispers of the heart, of all the people we love, who love us, of our relationships. There are the whispers of the spirit, however we define our faith, that inner spirit, the spirit within -- those quiet whispers that can comfort, heal, inspire.

The whispers of our lives are very important. When we ignore them our lives are diminished. We never reach the levels we could in understanding ourselves or in strengthening our relationships with others.

As I finish this column the future is ever more tenuous. I think again of my grandmother who, even as she listened to her children and her grandchildren, told us stories about the men in the family who went off to the Civil War and stories about their wives who were left behind to take care of children and farms. She talked in such a compelling way that we listened and remembered her stories long, long after she was gone and we were grown. (She left a treasure of Civil War letters and diaries for those grandchildren who had listened to her tales of the seven Pringle brothers who fought in the Civil War. Recently a cousin, one of those fortunate grandchildren who had listened to his grandmother's stories and inherited family Civil War letters, wrote and produced a poignant play based on Philip and Mary Pringle's letters, "Soldier, Come Home.")

A world at war requires new levels of leadership from all of us wherever we are, in whatever we are doing. When times are difficult, the art, the discipline of effective communication, becomes even more essential, and listening is the key for leaders who would be heard. Those who practice the art of diplomacy will fail unless the art of listening is an indispensable part of their portfolio. Listening is part of the art of leadership: never more needed, never more essential for leaders of change -- the indispensable companion on our journey to leadership.