Listen to Learn

“Take time to learn. Lead­er­ship requires fore­sight.” — Your Oxy­gen Mask First, Learn Like Your Life Depends on It

I love work­ing with smart peo­ple and strong per­son­al­i­ties — it makes for inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions and tremen­dous insights.

And one of the things we start to believe, over time (espe­cial­ly me) is that we have good lis­ten­ing skills — but we’re usu­al­ly just lis­ten­ing to find a solu­tion or to make a deci­sion quick­ly. We don’t lis­ten to learn. We lis­ten for the two to three things we need to move ahead – and miss the four, five or six things we need to under­stand the sit­u­a­tion fully.

It’s a hard bal­ance between tak­ing time to under­stand ver­sus what you need to know move quickly.

A friend best-described it as lis­ten­ing like a lawyer. And I’ll qual­i­fy that by say­ing lis­ten­ing like a lawyer who is build­ing a strate­gic case, in the court­room, when they have an agen­da for the jury to reach a cer­tain conclusion.

By the way, this is not a state­ment about all lawyers, all the time – it’s just an exam­ple of how, under some con­di­tions, we lis­ten to val­i­date our belief in the argu­ment we want to make. We lis­ten to prove a fore­gone con­clu­sion that rather than lis­ten to learn. I know I’ve done it many, many times.

And, I’ll add that I love my busi­ness lawyer, who asks excel­lent ques­tions and lis­tens deeply, before get­ting into action.

Lis­ten to Learn

When we lis­ten only with one per­spec­tive (or agen­da), we miss very impor­tant things. And it’s not only dis­re­spect­ful to the per­son with whom you are com­mu­ni­cat­ing, it’s a dis­ser­vice to you because you’re not avail­able to learn any­thing new.

The alter­na­tive is to active­ly lis­ten to learn, with a firm ques­tion in mind: not ​‘how do I get Frank to agree to pro­mote Sal­ly?’ rather ​‘does Sal­ly have what it takes to be an A‑Player if she were promoted?”

That’s a dif­fer­ent ques­tion that leads to a very dif­fer­ent conversation.

One pro­motes a fore­gone con­clu­sion, the oth­er is look­ing to decide the right course of action.

The Chal­lenge

• Notice when you lis­ten like a lawyer when lis­ten­ing like a learn­er can be more effective
• Try ask­ing a few more ques­tions to under­stand more deeply before com­ing to a conclusion.