When you listen to people, they feel valued. A 2003 study from Lund University in Sweden finds that mundane, almost trivial things like listening and chatting with employees are important aspects of successful leadership, because people feel more respected, visible and less anonymous, and included in teamwork.10 And a 2016 paper finds that this form of respectful inquiry, where the leader asks open questions and listens attentively to the response, is effective because it heightens the followers feelings of competence (feeling challenged and experiencing mastery), relatedness (feeling of belonging), and autonomy (feeling in control and having options). Those three factors are sort of the holy trinity of the self-determination theory of human motivation, originally developed by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan.11

Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt