Too Much Listening or Too Much Talking?

As a leader, have you found the balance between listening and speaking up?

Listening is a critical, often underutilized skill.  Sometimes for leaders there is a temptation to do a lot of the talking.  In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of how important it is for leaders to be effective listeners.   But if listening is already your forte, you may need to do more talking. Speaking up is a good way to demonstrate your expertise and gain the confidence of those around you.  As a leader, too much listening can come across as a lack of confidence or knowledge.  Staff need to hear from you - in measured amounts.  If you're hesitant as a speaker, find a safe place to try it out first. Talk shop with your friends or colleagues to test your ideas. Then, refine them to share in a meeting or with your colleagues. Try to say something early on in a meeting, even if it's something small, to establish yourself as part of the conversation. The challenge here is to support your staff by speaking up enough to set the stage for the conversation without creating an environment where your staff will feel they need to echo your ideas.  It's a fine balancing act.  Listening is important, but so is speaking. Success depends on doing both.  Finding the right balance - to ensure you bring out the best in your staff - is the place you are aiming for.  It will take some time but the rewards of building the capacity of your staff are worth the effort.


Adapted from "Keep Listening, but Start Talking" by Whitney Johnson.

Mindful or Mindless - continued...

As a leader, have you overlearned some of the basics of your role to the point where you do your work 'mindlessly'?

When Practice Makes Imperfect
(...thoughts from Ellen Langer...)


- One of the most cherished myths in education or any kind of training is that in order to learn a skill one must practice it to the point of doing it without thinking. 

- When we drill ourselves in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature, does this lead to performing the skill mindlessly?

- Does it make sense to freeze our understanding of the skill before we try it out in different contexts and, at various stages, adjust it to our own strengths and experiences? 

- If we learn the basics but do not overlearn them, we can vary them as we change or as the situation changes.

- Perhaps one could say that for everyone there are certain basics, but that there is no such thing as the basics.

- ...experts at anything become expert in part by varying those same basics.   

From: The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer
Published by: Da Capo Press