"Steve led people at Apple to execute so flawlessly without telling them what to do."

"This leads to important questions: how did everyone in the company decide what to do?"

"The process, which I call the Get Stuff Done (GSD) wheel, is relatively straightforward."

"you have to first lay the groundwork for collaboration. When run effectively, the GSD wheel will enable your team to achieve more collectively than anyone could ever dream of achieving individually — to burst the bounds of your brain."

"First, you have to listen to the ideas that people on your team have and create a culture in which they listen to each other."

"Next, you have to debate ideas and test them more rigorously. Then you need to decide — quickly, but not too quickly."

"Since not everyone will have been involved in the listen-clarify-debate-decide part of the cycle for every idea, the next step is to bring the broader team along."

"If you allow any part of the process to drag out, working on your team will feel like paying a collaboration tax, not making a collaboration investment."

"So, how do you get started? The first step is to listen more and talk less."

"The problem is that when you become the boss, people are predisposed to tell you that you must totally change your style of listening, and you can’t do that."

"Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, once said at an Apple University class that a manager’s most important role is to “give the quiet ones a voice.” I love this."

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the opposite approach, urging people to “Be loud!” I love this, too."

"This is your goal as well, but there is more than one way to achieve it. You have to find a way to listen that fits your personal style, and then create a culture in which everyone listens to each other so that all the burden of listening doesn’t fall on you."

"Before I interviewed at Apple, a friend warned me that Tim tended to allow long silences and that I shouldn’t let it unnerve me or feel the need to fill them."

"Following in Tim’s footsteps, one of my students in the Managing at Apple class said that he tried to make sure to spend at least 10 minutes in every one-on-one meeting listening silently, without reacting in any way"

"“I heard the things I didn’t want to hear,” my student said, validating Tim’s technique. “If I gave any reaction at all, people would often tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. I found that they were much more likely to say what they really thought — even if it wasn’t what I was hoping to hear — when I was careful not to show what I thought.”"

"When you’re the boss and people don’t know what you think, they waste a lot of time trying to guess."

"If you’re a quiet listener, then, you need to take steps to reassure those made uncomfortable by your style."

"If you want to be challenged, you need to be willing to challenge."

"Quiet listening clearly works for many managers, but I cannot pull it off. Luckily, there is another model."

"If quiet listening involves being silent to give people room to talk, loud listening is about saying things intended to get a reaction out of them."

"This was the way Steve Jobs listened. He would put a strong point of view on the table and insist on a response. Why do I call this listening, instead of talking, or even yelling? Because Steve didn’t just challenge others; he insisted that they challenge him back."

"If you have a loud listening style, you need to go to some lengths to build the confidence of those whom you’re making uncomfortable."

"And as people witness one another challenging the boss, they will grow to feel it’s safe to do so as well."

"Steve didn’t surround himself with people who’d tell him when he was wrong by making everybody feel comfortable. The people who worked closely with him knew they had better speak up when they saw a problem or a flaw in his logic, or face his wrath later."

"Paul Saffo, an engineering professor at Stanford, describes a technique he calls “strong opinions, weakly held.” Saffo has made the point that expressing strong, some might say outrageous, positions with others is a good way to get to a better answer, or at least to have a more interesting conversation."

"“Please poke holes in this idea — I know it may be terrible. So tell me all the reasons we should not do that.”"

"Loud listening — stating a point of view strongly — offers a quick way to expose opposing points of view or flaws in reasoning."

"Perhaps most important is to stick to the style that feels most natural to you."

"Instead, try to strengthen your awareness of how your style makes your colleagues feel and work on improving that dynamic."

"1. Have a simple system for employees to use to generate ideas and voice complaints,"

"2. Make sure that at least some of the issues raised are quickly addressed, and"

"3. Regularly offer explanations as to why the other issues aren’t being addressed."

"Define clear boundaries of how much time you can spend — and then make sure that time is highly impactful."

"One big idea is pretty easy to copy, but thousands of tweaks are impossible to see from the outside, let alone imitate."

"Next, I talked through some key principles that ought to guide the ideas team, first among them empowerment."

"The ideas team had to commit to listening to any idea that anyone brought to them, to explain clearly why they rejected the ideas they rejected, and to help people implement ideas that the ideas team deemed worthwhile."

"Therefore, I asked the ideas team to read all the ideas and talk to all the people who submitted them — to listen. After that development, the team used a combination of votes and judgment to select the best ideas."

"More importantly, the ideas team helped people get the selected ideas implemented."

"And I sent around again the HBR article showing how competitive advantage tends to come not from one great idea but the combination of hundreds of smaller ones."

"Second, it inspired people who had other ideas like this to be vocal about them."

"Third, and most importantly, it encouraged people to listen to each other’s ideas, to take them seriously, and to help one another implement them without waiting for management’s blessing."

"Sometimes creating a culture of listening is simply a matter of managing meetings the right way."

"Sometimes I’d have a quick conversation with people before a meeting, asking some to pipe up and others to pipe down. In other words, part of my job was to constantly figure out new ways to “give the quiet ones a voice.”"

"By taking time to get to know people and by just listening she was able to build trust and show she cared deeply about the peace process. Eventually, the Moros became very willing to speak to her and to take her places where other outsiders couldn’t or wouldn’t go."

"It made all the difference in her ability to be effective in the complex and nuanced negotiations her job required."