I have been a talker my whole life. Often, in frustration, Dad would say, “Lauren Ann, stop talking just to hear the sound of your own voice.” Regarding leadership, he expounded on that thought. He said, “Stop talking. Listen. You don’t learn anything from talking. But if you listen, one way or another, your team will tell you what you need to know about them and what they need.” Those of us with the “gift of gab” are, for some irrational reason, afraid of silence—and so we tend to fill it with words ourselves. This is an area where I have had to really work on disciplining myself. I still have to work on it.
St. Francis of Assisi, and later Dr. Stephen Covey, advised that we should “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It’s very difficult to seek first to understand if you are the one talking. That is if your mouth is working harder than your ears. If you are always the one talking, your team eventually feels they have no voice and, therefore, stops listening. It becomes a monologue rather than a dialogue—and often a monologue to a brick wall.
Try to stop talking and just listen for a while instead. Furthermore, when you listen, turn off your internal dialogue—you know, the one that’s always interrupting with, “Yes, but…” Listen with the intention of listening, not with the intention of responding. This, more often than not, allows you to hear the message behind the words. When you do this, your team will begin to share more about their projects, their struggles, their joys, their frustrations, and their aspirations. They will begin, in subtle ways, to express how they need to be led, when and how they need encouragement, and when they need to be left alone to figure it out on their own.
Your team will tell you what they need from you—but only if you are listening more than you are talking.
Read Lauren’s Whitepaper on The Nine Essentials of Significant Leadership.