Listen … Silent

Our world is quieter now – less traffic on the road and in the air, reduced economic activity, and a slower pace of life. On the other hand, people are in turmoil, with much inner noise and drama as they try to navigate the uncertainties each day brings as best they can. As a leader, you have to deal with this, even as you deal with your own fear and uncertainties about the future. How to do this?

Be Silent and Listen.

Speaking is vaunted as a valuable skill to get us ahead in life. Indeed, in my MBA at Harvard Business School, speaking would make or break you. So lauded was/is it, that up to 25% of your course grade would be for “class participation” i.e. speaking! I guess the assumption was that to speak meaningfully you would have to listen – but to gauge from many of my classmates’ comments, I wonder how much real listening was going on.

The first listening is to ourselves. This helps us to improve our self-awareness, the foundation of emotional intelligence, a skill that is most critical for effective leaders. Meditation, a practice that I recommend everyone does daily, is done in silence for a reason – to minimize distractions so that we can listen to nothing but the inner voice. In this place we find peace, deep insights, profound answers and joy.

Work is one of those places where very little listening takes place. Absorbed in doing the work, we make little time for listening. In my coaching and leadership development work, I hear objections like: “But I don’t have to listen –the work needs to be done”. From my own experience in leading organizations, the “work” is all about listening. For when we listen to our team members, our customers and our suppliers, the work becomes easier – people feel respected, included and motivated. They now do their work with ease, grace and joy. And know what? Your work becomes joyful, just watching the people you work with bloom, watching your customers’ and your suppliers’ delight.

How do improve our listening? Start with practicing silence:

1. Reduce how much you speak and allow others to speak. You have two ears, one mouth for a reason – to listen twice as much as you speak.
2. Tune into what the other person is saying. Being silent is more than not talking – have you ever been in a conversation with someone who was not talking yet you knew they weren’t listening to you? They seemed far away, consumed by the noise and distraction in their heads. You saw in their eyes a distant gaze that said: “I am not into you at this moment. I am not listening”. Put down your phone, make eye contact and show whoever you are communicating with that they are the only one that matters to you right now.
3. Spend time every day, even a few minutes, in your own silence, listening to the wisdom of your inner voice.

Did you ever notice that the word “LISTEN” has the same letters as “SILENT”? How profound. Listening is a skill that is fundamentally important to the success of any and all relationships – love, business, family, friendship. Yet most of us have a very, very hard time genuinely LISTENING. Taking the first step of being silent helps.