Leadership: 2. I am here to hear

Your team should not feel a barrier between them and you. You should be highly approachable and be able to listen to them, without looking at your watch. If you are busy when someone comes to you, give them a reasonable amount of time (5 to 60 mins; not more) and call them yourself to discuss the issue. Don’t interrupt with your ideas and interpretations of the situation; if you are not clear on something, ask for clarity, but otherwise listen without interruption.
Once you have heard out completely, think it over and arrive at a solution. As you may know there are many ways to arrive at a solution and the best is probably the Socratic Questioning (said to be institutionalized by Socrates) method, basically it means that you ask (a lot of) questions and help the other person arrive at a solution to the initial problem – Also know as the “teaching by asking rather than telling” method.
It is also important to be among the team, you need to get out of the exalted chair and walk among the team, if you are inside the cabin all the time, you will not be able to persuade people to come to talk to you. You must be seem as one among the rest rather than being aloof and trying to keep yourself away from the team (the ages of babudom has gone for good). Again, if I have to derive examples from the past, I don’t think we could ever forget Uma being more of a friend and less of a boss.
You should be able to read the underlying feelings of the team very early; this will not be conveyed in any meeting or thru email (at least not until it blows out of hand). You can only gauge this thru informal interactions.