One Habit That Makes Leaders More Likable, After 26 Years

Nathan Brooks

After 26 years of coaching executives, Marcel Schwantes has found one habit that makes leaders more likable: talk less and listen actively. Schwantes, an Inc. contributing editor, executive coach, speaker and author, says communication travels faster than ever. Emails, texts, Slack messages and video calls keep people connected, yet active listening remains one of the most overlooked skills for building relationships.

The signal leaders send

Schwantes says people naturally gravitate toward those who “make them feel heard, understood, and valued.” He treats active listening as a simple habit that separates highly effective leaders from everyone else. Giving someone full attention shows that what the person has to say matters, and for leaders that signal can build trust.

That is the practical core of his advice. Leaders do not need to dominate a conversation or rush to claim the last word. They need to make room for other perspectives and show that they genuinely want to understand the person across from them.

Schwantes says: “They’re often the ones who know when to stop talking and start listening.” His point is not that eloquence carries no value. It is that the best communicators in his experience may not be the most articulate people in the room. Restraint, not performance, creates room for understanding.

Three behaviors behind the result

Drawing on more than 25 years of coaching executives and developing leaders, Schwantes links the habit to three qualities: humility, curiosity and respect. Leaders with those qualities create the conditions in which people can share their thoughts, concerns and ideas comfortably. Their style does not dominate; it makes room for the person across from them.

• Humility: Leaders do not dominate conversations or feel compelled to have the last word.
• Curiosity: They want to understand what is happening with the person across from them.
• Respect: They make room for other perspectives.

Schwantes says some of the leaders people respected most during their careers made them comfortable sharing thoughts, concerns and ideas. Those memories connect the listening habit to trust and likability. The behavior appears in the exchange: one person speaks, while the other makes room and seeks to understand.

What does active listening change for leaders?

For Schwantes, active listening changes what counts as strong communication. His experience suggests that an executive’s fluency matters less than whether the exchange leaves the other person feeling heard, understood and valued. For leaders, listening becomes a relationship tool: practiced consistently, it can strengthen trust and make a leader more likable.

For executives, this reframes communication volume. Emails, texts, Slack messages and video calls can keep leaders connected all day, but more output does not replace the full attention Schwantes values. His practical standard is behavioral: a leader must know when to stop talking and start listening.

The habit also changes the sequence of an exchange. Leaders make room for the other perspective first, then listen to understand the person rather than preparing a response to dominate. The benefit appears in the relationship: trust grows because the other person sees evidence that their words matter.

For coaches, the same habit offers a grounded way to assess leaders without relying on polish or fluency. Schwantes identifies observable signs: a leader avoids dominating the exchange, makes room for another perspective, and tries to understand what lies behind the person’s words. Those behaviors match the humility, curiosity and respect he says respected leaders demonstrate.

The practical test

The advice is simple enough to apply in a live exchange: give the other person full attention, resist the need to have the last word, and listen with genuine curiosity about their perspective. Those actions turn an abstract leadership virtue into observable behavior. They also give the other person a clearer measure of whether the leader was present.

Schwantes presents active listening as a consistent habit that applies beyond important meetings. As messages keep moving faster, the next exchange will test whether leaders can resist the last word and make room for another perspective. In Schwantes’s account, that is where trust and likability begin.