There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from the Democrats stunning defeat in Massachusetts. People demand to be heard. If a near 50 year Senate seat held by a leading liberal, Ted Kennedy, in a leading liberal state can fall to a little known conservative state senator, we should all sit up and take notice.

This is not a Democrat versus Republican issue, despite lots of noise sure to be heard asserting such. No, this is about listening to people and being responsive to their needs and not your agenda. We all run this exact same risk, every day.

It is all too easy to get caught up in our own agenda, often driven by the exigencies of the day, until we become tone deaf to the needs of those around us. We start to “listen” our family, friends and employees through the filter of our own agenda until we no longer hear what they are saying to us.

I see this with business leaders all the time. They get victimized by the very success they worked so hard to achieve by becoming increasingly isolated and out of touch with the people that matter most, their employees. They get filtered messages from their direct reports that are skewed by their perspectives and desire to please the boss. Before long, the leader may find that they have lost the one thing that most defines them- followers.

It happened to the Democrats in Massachusetts yesterday, just like it did the Republicans a year ago. Kind of scary how fast being deaf can make you look really, really dumb.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 11:09 am and is filed under Organization Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.