Julian Treasure is a sound and communication expert whose five TED talks have drawn an estimated 170 million views, and his mission is to regenerate the world’s listening. He argues that listening declines as leaders become more senior, because organisations promote the people who talk most, senior roles reward knowing over asking, and status makes the humility of listening harder. This matters because a leader who stops listening loses access to bad news, and a company full of people who do not listen becomes a company that does not listen. His core takeaway is that listening is a trainable skill rather than a personality trait. Leaders can diagnose their own listening with simple tests and rebuild it through deliberate, daily practice.
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The need-to-know:
Run the bad news test this week. If nobody has brought you bad news recently, you are not hearing what is actually happening in your organisation.
Hold a meeting where you say nothing. Handing the meeting to a colleague and staying silent surfaces knowledge and perspectives your presence normally suppresses.
Use PAVE when you are convinced the other person is wrong. Paraphrase, admit they are right in their own world, validate their reasoning, then empathise, because listening is not the same as agreeing.
Let’s go a little further
Julian Treasure has spent his career asking how people and organisations actually sound. He began as a drummer, built a magazine publishing business from one person to around 150 staff, then sold it in 2002 to found The Sound Agency, an audio branding firm that advised brands including Nokia. Five TED talks later, he is one of the most recognised voices on listening in the world. In his third conversation on The Partnership Playbook, he turned his attention squarely to leaders.
His defining insight came from his own client work. For years he wondered why the companies he advised did not listen. The answer, he realised, was simple. A company full of people who do not listen becomes a company that does not listen. The problem is human before it is structural.
Why seniority erodes listening
Treasure proposes an inverse relationship between seniority and listening, and he gives three reasons. Organisations tend to promote extroverts, the people who lead meetings and speak far more than they listen. Senior roles carry an expectation of knowing and telling rather than asking and wondering. And listening is inherently humble. To listen fully is to say that the other person matters more than you in that moment, which becomes harder for leaders accustomed to being the centre of attention.
The cost of this drift is concrete. Treasure described working inside an organisation run by what he calls a dragon leader, someone who punished anyone bringing unwelcome news. People became so afraid that they invented good news and buried the bad. The leader had no real picture of the business, and three years of accounts eventually had to be restated.
The leadership lesson
A leader’s information is only as good as their listening. Silence from the organisation is not the same as alignment. When a CEO speaks to 50 people, Treasure notes, 50 different messages land, each filtered through a unique set of assumptions, fears and hopes. Town halls and announcements can feel like communication while functioning as broadcasting. Without a return path, the leader never learns what was actually received.
This is also where disagreement becomes valuable. Treasure argues that the ability to entertain challenge is the lifeblood of a healthy organisation, and that a culture in which everyone agrees with the boss is fragile. His PAVE tool gives leaders a disciplined way to stay inside a difficult conversation: paraphrase what you heard, admit the other person is right in their own world, validate their reasoning, then empathise with their position. None of this requires you to surrender your view. Listening is not agreeing.
Applying it as a CEO
Treasure offers three practical diagnostics. First, the bad news test: when did someone last bring you bad news, and how comfortable do people feel doing so? Second, with everyone’s consent, record a few meetings and review them. Notice how much you speak, how many questions you ask, how often you interrupt, and whether anyone pauses after others finish. Third, run a meeting in which you say nothing at all. Hand it to a colleague and observe. Treasure finds that people who rarely contribute often surface knowledge the leader never knew existed.
Two habits reinforce these tests. Ask people to play back what they heard, so you can close the gap between what you intended and what landed. And become comfortable with silence. A pause after a question invites the answer that matters, whether in a negotiation, a sales conversation or a performance review.
Above all, Treasure treats listening as a skill that responds to practice, much like fitness. A single inspiring talk changes little a month later. Small, daily repetition changes behaviour. That thinking sits behind his new AI-driven app, which pairs structured lessons with a few minutes of practice each day.
His definition of leadership captures the whole conversation: being conscious of the effect you actually have on other people, which may differ from the effect you intended and from the flattery you receive.
If your team stopped bringing you bad news tomorrow, how long would it take you to notice?
Question for you
If you sat through your next leadership meeting without saying a word, what do you suspect you would hear for the first time? I would genuinely like to know. Write to me directly.
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