Category: Leadership

It’s Possible to be TOO Good

June 19th, 2023

Growing up, we’re often taught that we should try to be the best at whatever it is that we do. Some parents take it so far as to be abusive with regard to that mindset – picking apart everything that their children do to find flaws in it or even withholding love when they don’t think that their child is “good enough”.

This can cause a positively huge amount of problems for a person during the course of their life, but the one we’re going to look at here is something that a lot of people wouldn’t even consider a “problem” – succeeding in spite of overwhelming odds (and often doing so consistently).

I can hear people now going “What’s wrong with succeeding against the odds?” After all, half of the movies that we watch are underdog characters who win despite it looking impossible, sometimes being literally bloody and barely able to stand when they win. We’re taught to idolize this shit (which is, in itself, part of the problem).

Yes, you can win in situations like that (sometimes), but the big question is – at what cost?

Any victory is going to have a cost, even if it’s just an opportunity cost (what could you have been doing instead that might have made you happier?). However, as the odds of your failure go up, the cost of that victory also goes up.

It can seriously get to the point where it can impact your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. I’ve not only seen it happen in others, I’ve seen it happen firsthand. And the “reward” for pulling it off is that the people above you in the org take the effort for granted (after all, you made it look easy and they weren’t the ones being broken by it), and they expect you to do it repeatedly.

Don’t fall for it.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, and, for whatever reason, you can’t simply walk away, be mindful of what’s happening and use it to your advantage.

Don’t run yourself into the ground for someone who won’t actually care (honestly, don’t run yourself into the ground for anyone, but that’s another blog post). Instead, document the hell out of that, use it to update your resume into something that will make other companies drool at the chance to have you join their org, work on how to package and sell those wins in a conversation, and then find a better place to be.

There are absolutely healthy and relatively sane workplaces out there who will value you as a person and the fact that you can get shit done while not expecting you to damage your physical or mental health to do it. And the hilarious part is that they usually pay a lot better than the ones who expect you to grind yourself into a paste on a regular basis.

You don’t owe loyalty to people who will take you for granted or who will expect you to suffer so that they can reap the rewards. Break the cycle of abuse and work to make your life better, because you only get one.

“The clever bird chooses the branch whereon to perch; the wise servant selects the master to serve. Seize the chance when it comes, for repentance ever comes too late.”

– Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Make Friends – Help a Busy Person

May 2nd, 2023
One of the easiest ways to make friends and allies in business is to help people.

Seriously. It’s often that simple.

It doesn’t even have to be that big of an effort on your part. In fact, the busier the person you’re talking to, the smaller the assistance has to be a lot of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, they’ll thank you for doing huge things for them as well (provided you do them properly), but the busier someone gets, the more small things pile up that need to be taken care of and the harder it is to get them off of their plate.

I say this both as someone who often is a very busy person as well as someone who helps others in order to further strategic goals (and sometimes just because it’s the right thing to do. You don’t always have to have an ulterior motive).

If you take something off of my plate and do it well, you’ll both get my attention and generally a public call out for it in the next group meeting. I’ll make sure that others know that you’re someone who helps out. A lot of the people I’ve worked with are the same way.

Let’s look at a real world example of this in action.

Part of my job is to put my team and the work that we do in a good light. One of the ways that we do this is to demo the work that we do to business stakeholders. These stakeholders can be anything from line managers to members of the C-suite depending on the situation. (No pressure, right?)

In order to do this well, you need to do some prep work. In this case, we were working with one of the business Subject Matter Experts so that we would present the technical aspects and they would speak to the business impact (as a pattern, it’s pretty effective).

This requires setting up meetings which, in a busy environment, can be a challenge because of everyone’s schedules.

Normally, this is something that our Scrum Master (a wonderful and incredibly busy person of whom I am quite fond) would help facilitate. However, since this is my team’s show (as it were), I put it on my list of things to do just to make sure it doesn’t fall through the cracks.

I didn’t state that I was going to do it, I just did it because it needed to be done and I had the ability to get the ball rolling. From a practical standpoint it made sense and I have a good working relationship with all of the people who needed to be in the room for the dry run, so communicating with them isn’t a problem.

So, that morning, I set up a group chat to hash out the timing (if you’ve ever worked with a group of busy people, you’ll learn that their calendar in Outlook usually isn’t their real calendar). We get the whole thing set up in about 15 minutes, meeting invites go out, everyone’s happy, and the world keeps spinning.

The Scrum Master also made it a point to thank me for taking point on it because of how busy things were (in other news, water is wet and Wednesday ends in ‘y’).

By taking a tiny task off of the plate of another busy person I:
- Further cemented my business friendship with the Scrum Master (who I already get along well with, but this sort of thing never hurts)
- Helped the business Subject Matter Expert (yet another very busy person) save themselves time and headache by setting up the meeting and taking the lead of laying out roughly how we wanted to run the presentation.
- Helped the members of my team set themselves up for success (This is always a big deal for me).
- Added another item to the list that shows that I am a person who can both get things done and can easily take up leadership on items without being asked (never underestimate how much impact this can have on your business relationships and career).
Not bad for 15 minutes of work that I was planning on doing anyway. And the great news is that you can do it too and it often really is that simple.
Celebrate Others

April 25th, 2023
It costs you nothing to celebrate the success of other people.

It doesn’t diminish the work you do. It doesn’t negate your own accomplishments. The world won’t end if you give kudos to someone else.

In fact, celebrating the success of others is one of the easiest ways to make allies in an organization or community. The person you’re celebrating will be glad that somebody is recognizing them and the people around you will generally see you as someone who wants to share the success rather than make everything about yourself.

This makes those people more likely to want to cooperate with you because they see that you will share the credit and that you play well with others.

People like to do well. They also like to be acknowledged for doing well. Go out of your way to celebrate the wins that other people have. It can pay dividends years later because those people will remember you and what you did for them (at literally not cost to yourself).

Years worth of upside for something that takes less than five minutes to do. And that’s not an exaggeration.

The greatest piece of personal marketing that you can have is people who speak well of you when you’re not in the room. The most likely people to say positive things about you in these situations fall into a couple of categories:
- People you’ve worked your butt off to make happy.
- People who you’ve helped put the spotlight on when they do something well.
One of these is a heck of a lot easier to pull off than the other. Both are worth doing at times, but making people feel good is much lower effort and much simpler to scale.

The irony is that the second group is, in my experience, actually more likely to say positive things about you. It seems weird, but in a lot of cases, feelings really do trump effort.

That’s not to say that you need to fawn over people (that creates its own problems). Just give credit where it’s due and do it publicly – especially in front of the people in the chain of command of the person or group that you’re praising.

If you do it consistently, you’ll all probably come out ahead. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.
Don’t Obsess Over Hiring “The Best”

April 9th, 2023
A lot of companies boast that they only hire “the best.” Many of them even go so far to say that they only hire the top x percent (the top 10% seems to be the most common claim).

I’m certain that this sounds impressive to someone (probably their executive team), but there are two problems with it:
- It’s a meaningless claim and, frankly, bullshit.
- If it was true, you’d never want to work there.
It’s a Meaningless Claim

If all of the companies that claim to hire only the top 10% of developers were actually doing that, they’d all have one employee each (if they were lucky). Statistically, that would probably result in a situation where there were more companies than total developers that would be capable of meeting their criteria – not total candidates, total developers globally (the total candidates at any given time, for any given company/job are a tiny fraction of the total number of developers).

So maybe they mean the top 10% of people who apply to them? This sounds more reasonable, but it’s still bullshit.

Say you have 3 open positions and 5 people apply. After interviewing all five of them, you find that three of them would be an amazing fit for your company.

If you only hire the top 10%, that means you can only hire one of the three amazing candidates and the other two roles are going to have to go unfilled.

Actually, even that isn’t true. Technically you could only hire half of a developer because 1 out of 5 is 20%, and we can’t be having that. We have standards to maintain! Somebody get the chainsaw!

Okay, okay fine. We’ll make an exception just this once. We’ll hire you and you’ll get to keep your legs, but remember that you owe us for the consideration. It’s this sort of kindness that makes us a Best Place To Work. Welcome aboard, Bob.

You Wouldn’t Want To Work There

Now that we’ve debunked the absurdity that is the Top 10% nonsense, we can get serious again (at least for a minute or two. Past that, I make no promises).

It’s been my experience that a lot of the places that make the top 10% claim are places that you wouldn’t want to work (or at least I don’t). They’re filled with inflated egos and hero programmers who horde knowledge in order to maintain their position (because, let’s face it, that ego is generally a very thin mask over a great deal of fear).

Both of these are bad things.

They may not start that way, but the cultures almost always turn that direction in my experience. Once you get a few self-important “geniuses” in an org (especially if they make it into management or executive positions), they tend to bias toward hiring two kinds of people – people who “impress” them (more self-important “geniuses”) and people who won’t question them.

That’s a recipe for abuse, assholes who make everyone else’s lives miserable, and a metric boatload of overtime when things inevitably blow up because one of the “geniuses” didn’t think things through or cut corners to “save the day”.

Been there. Done that. I think I’ll pass on it from now on.

What to do Instead?

Stop worrying about hiring “the best” and, instead, hire people with decent skills and the potential to grow within your organization.

I’m being totally serious. Ignore the business magazines that try to sell you on the FAANG hiring methods du jour (those have changed a lot in recent years anyway) and hire people with decent skills (both technical and personal) who want to get better at what they do. Especially pay attention to people that don’t look like you.

I’d say that creating software is a team sport now, and while that’s true, it’s not the whole story. Creating a viable product and finding market fit for it is the team sport you’re probably actually playing (even if your products are internal to your company). Software is just part of the way that you get there.

You need people that act like, well, people. Yes, they may need to be able to write code, but they’ll also need to have the understanding, patience, and humility to work with others in order to understand problems that exist in areas outside of their current experience.

The other side of that coin is that you have to put the work in too. You can’t just hire people and turn them loose. Part of the exercise of hiring people who can grow is to put the effort in to help them grow.

Expose them to technologies that they may not have used before. Encourage them to take on challenges that can help grow their leadership skills. Involve them in the discovery process for business development (it’s amazing what a new set of eyes can spot).

Yes, that means that they won’t be “100% utilized” at doing what they’re (currently) best at, but you shouldn’t be trying to run them at the red line all of the time anyway. That’s a recipe for burnout and guarantees that they won’t improve while they’re with you (which, frankly, is something that should terrify you because, if they aren’t improving, your company isn’t improving either).

So get out there, hire decent people with decent skills, and work to build teams that actually work together and grow in order to meet the challenges that they face. You’ll all probably come out better for it.
You Can’t Force Psychological Safety

March 12th, 2023

In recent years, a lot more emphasis has been placed on making spaces (particularly workplaces) into settings that have psychological safety. I consider this a fantastic trend (though a lot of people tend to disagree with me) because people who feel psychologically safe not only have a better quality of life, the results of their work tend to be better.

What sane, healthy business or leader doesn’t want to have happy employees who do great work?

The problem is that a lot of people have absolutely no idea how to foster this kind of environment (or, worse yet, say they want to foster it and then do everything they can to destroy that safety). Many of them seem to think that it’s as simple as saying “you’re safe. You can talk to me about anything.”

It doesn’t work like that.

The truth of the matter is that you can’t make someone else feel psychologically safe. You don’t have that power – only they do. There is no magic wand that you can wave and say “you’re psychologically safe!” (Especially since that’s usually followed by an unspoken “Now go do what I say”).

Real psychological safety happens when the other person feels that they have it. End of story.

So, if you can’t make someone else feel safe, how the heck do you get to a place where your team actually has psychological safety?

The answer is that it’s much like nurturing any other kind of relationship – you do things that help foster it and try to avoid things that harm it.

Things That Help Foster Psychological Safety

Treat people like people – I know I say this a lot, but the people around you are people. Not resources. Not human capital. They’re people, damnit. Treat them like it. You’re never going to have psychological safety in a group of people that you don’t treat like people.

Follow up on your commitments – Show the people around you that you do what you say you will. Every. Single. Day. People who consistently see that you do what you say are going to be more likely to open up.

Own your mistakes – Don’t bury mistakes that you make. Admit to them with your whole chest. Especially when they cause some harm (even small harm) to the people around you.

Apologize and make things right – After you’ve admitted to the mistake, apologize for it and see what can be done to make things right. Did you ever have moments as a kid when adults essentially told you to deal with it when they did something that hurt you? Did you like that? Did it make you feel safe? Yeah, well, it doesn’t make your peers or people who report to you feel safe either.

Realize that we all have bad days, even you. (Sometimes especially you) – Have some grace with people, including yourself. Sometimes we have an off day and things don’t come out right. As long as it’s not a pattern of behavior, that’s okay. Own it, apologize, and do better. The people around you will see you doing it and be more likely to model that behavior themselves.

Reassure people – when they make mistakes (and they will), make it a point to help put things into perspective and reassure them that it’s okay to make a mistake. Then work with them to figure out how to make things right if something has to be made whole.

One of the ways I help calm people down when things go sideways is literally to say “If that’s the worst thing that happens today, we’ll be alright.” My team hears this fairly often. The thing is that you have to mean it and then you have to help them fix it.

Celebrate the wins – Don’t just focus on when things go wrong. Call out the things that go right, and do it frequently. Even if something seems like a small win, it’s still a win. Celebrating victory helps bring people together and reinforces social bonds. Those bonds help foster psychological safety.

Share the credit – You should be doing this anyway, but sharing the credit for those wins makes people feel like they’re not going to be used by you (because you’ve literally demonstrated that you aren’t just using them). It also helps a lot of people feel like part of a cohesive group, and that can help foster a sense of psychological safety.

Realize that, while you may be the one “in charge” on paper (or in the org chart), at the end of the day, you aren’t in charge of a damned thing. You’re responsible for the people in your care – I guarantee that every person who works with you can get a job somewhere else. If they want to be somewhere else, they aren’t going to have safety here. Even if the project isn’t great, you can help your team feel safe and even look forward to working together despite the challenges.

Things That Destroy Psychological Safety

The short answer is that the things that destroy psychological safety are pretty much the opposite of everything on the above list – berate people for mistakes, go out of your way to find flaws when they don’t really matter, be “The Boss”, and don’t admit when you make mistakes.

People will see those things and they will instinctively know that they can’t trust you. If they don’t trust you, they aren’t going to feel safe. Period.

This is sometimes a lot harder than it sounds. Remember that you’re a person too and sometimes you don’t feel secure in your own position due to pressures that you are facing, causing you to revert to closed off behavior. Those are the times that leadership can feel lonely, but realize that you aren’t actually alone.

The people that work with you (and especially the people that report to you) want to see you succeed and to feel secure because they themselves want to succeed and feel secure. If you put effort into it, unless you’re in a situation where no reasonable person could ever feel safe, they should at least start to feel like they’re safe in the space that you’ve created as a group.

Again, remember that power is with them, not with you. You can’t force it, but you can help it grow.

Also keep in mind that, while psychological safety can be hard to build, it’s incredibly easy to destroy. It’s something you will have to work to encourage every day, but it’s worth it – both for you and for those around you.
It’s Not My Fault But It Is My Responsibility

February 15th, 2023

The nature of a lot of my work means that I find myself put into situations where my team and I come in to continue (or fix, depending on the day) the work of other people who have long since rolled off of a project or out of a company.

Sometimes this means coming into an environment where tensions are already high and trust is already low because of the actions of people who left before you ever arrived. This can lead to some unpleasant interactions. In hindsight, they’re often funny, but in the moment they’re a recipe for a really bad day.

I once found myself apologizing to a member of my team because they had gotten raked over the coals for something that they weren’t aware of as being a problem (and which I inadvertently set in motion because we were all new). They tried to assure me that it was okay and that it wasn’t my fault which, frankly, was extremely nice of them.

I made it a point to turn it into a teachable moment by telling them it may not have been my fault but that it was my responsibility and that those two things are different (though both are important).

As a leader, you may not be the cause of the underlying problems (i.e. it’s not your fault), but it is on you to take care of things going forward – making sure that your people have the information, skills and tools that they need, managing expectations both of the people who report to you as well as the expectations of the people above and to the sides of you, and keeping the lines of communication open to help ensure success in what you’re doing (or at least as close to success as you can reasonably get).

That’s what it means to take responsibility for not only your actions, but the outcome of the projects you’re placed on and the success or failure of the team that you lead. The one common element in all of your successes and failures is you and you need to own that.

If something didn’t go well, examine first if there was anything you could have done differently to improve the outcome then expand the scope to see if there is anything that the team could have done (Hint – most of the changes the team may have made would have probably at least been impacted by something you could have done).

If something went well, look at the things that caused the success and then look at things that you could have done to make it go even better. After all, failure isn’t our only teacher.

Taking responsibility for situations isn’t easy. In fact, sometimes it’s downright frightening, but it’s the only way to consistently get better and to more consistently be successful (again, not everything is going to work out well, and that’s okay too).

However, you’re going to need to temper this mindset a little. It’s true that you’re responsible for things at your level as well as for how the actions of people you’re leading work out. It’s equally true, and just as important, that you empower the people you lead to be responsible for the things at their level (and that they do the same for the people they lead).

This is how you get self-empowered teams that can take ownership of tough problems and (hopefully) succeed where others might not.

If you take literally everything on your own shoulders, your team will come to rely on you too much. This will slow them down and lead to even more problems because they don’t feel like they can act on their own. In contrast, empowering them means that they can make decisions which they are better equipped to make and execute on than you would be. That makes success more likely and, honestly, makes you look kind of amazing to the people above you because you’ve helped gel a team that Gets Things Done.

Do what you can, take responsibility for the outcomes, empower your own people, and see that they do the same. It’s a massive change in mindset for most people, but the results might surprise you.
What Are You Waiting For? A Different Take on a Trite Question.

February 6th, 2023

If you’re anything like me (or many of the people I’ve known), you’ve gotten asked “what are you waiting for?” more than once in your life.

In these instances, the emphasis is put on the word “waiting”. “What are you waiting for?” – as though the act of waiting is, by its very nature, offensive to the person asking the question. And, truth be told, it probably is offensive to the person asking the question because they’ve been conditioned to think that you have to always be doing something or else you’re a sinful waste of flesh (the Protestant Work Ethic strikes again).

The thing is that it’s a perfectly valid and useful question – just not the way they ask it, so we’re going to ask it in a way that may actually be of some benefit to you.

What are you waiting for?

Taking the emphasis off of the act of waiting and putting it on the thing that will cause you to stop waiting hits a little differently, doesn’t it? Almost as though you are waiting for a valid purpose.

Here’s a hint – you usually are.

Waiting (or at least appearing to wait) is sometimes a perfectly valid option. There are even times when it’s the wisest option.

You may be taking a break after having done a lot of work. You may be waiting for a long running process to finish. You may be waiting for political infighting to get to a point where it’s to your advantage to act. You may even be performing actual work (thinking, for example) in such a manner that it only looks like you’re inactive.

These are all valid reasons to wait, and are by no means the only valid reasons. Some of them are even covered in classic written works on strategy.

The real question, however, is what will get you to stop waiting?

Have a criteria that will cause you to start being active again, otherwise you run the risk of falling into indecision (also known as analysis paralysis). When that criteria is met, act with purpose and at a pace which makes sense. You don’t always have to be “busy” doing something, no matter what a lot of people in this society may try to tell you. Waiting can be a useful choice as long as you know why you’re waiting and know (roughly) what you’re going to do afterward.
There’s More To Life Than Work

January 2nd, 2023

There’s frequently a worship of “hustle culture” in this, and many other, industries. You get told that if you work really really hard and do insanely long hours that people will somehow recognize you and you’ll magically get ahead.

It’s a lie and I think a lot of people are starting to realize it. The fact that every business journal has articles on “quiet quitting” and people refusing to work extra hours is a sign that this is both the case and that the people at the top are terrified of this trend because they’re working so hard to change it.

Working insane hours for someone else will almost never let you get ahead. In fact, it’s more likely to wear you down and encourage others to exploit you because you obviously don’t value yourself or your time. (Remember that we encourage the behavior that we allow.)

Sure, it may work on extremely rare occasions if you’re working for someone else. It’s more likely to work if you’re working for yourself rather than someone else, but even then, the odds are against you for a number of reasons.

In my career, I’ve literally seen people work themselves into the hospital or even into an early grave. I’ve honestly lost track of how many of my friends and coworkers have had heart attacks, cancer, and other health issues that were, at the very least, exacerbated by (if not caused outright by) the stress of working ridiculous numbers of hours and being “always on”.

I remember a coworker of mine being in the hospital after a heart attack and his boss visiting him, demanding to know why he wasn’t using the time to study programming instead of resting like his doctor ordered him to. I wish this was a joke or an exaggeration.

If you add in the people who have suffered extreme burnout or had their doctors literally tell them that their job was killing them and they needed to find someplace else to be, the number is even higher.

For my own part, my doctor was overjoyed when I left my position with a Fortune 50 mega-bank because of what it was doing to my health. She had reason to be happy that I quit. It’s left me with health issues that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. Thankfully we caught them early, so they’re manageable with lifestyle changes, but the damage is still there.

As a result, I’ve gone out of my way to set healthier boundaries for myself. I’ve also worked hard to help set healthy boundaries and expectations for the other members of my team.

This is often more difficult than you’d think.

Most of my current team is in India. They’re a great bunch of people and I enjoy working with every last one of them. There is, however, a downside (as there is with working with any group of people).

Their work day ends at about 11am my time. This in itself isn’t a problem, though it does occasionally make it difficult for them to get access to some of our coworkers in the US. The problem is that they are a truly driven bunch of people (which is great and part of the reason that I love the lot of them – they honestly help inspire me to keep improving as well) and I have to make sure that they don’t overwork themselves (which is bad).

True story. I literally have each of them pinned on my Teams chat list so I can make sure that their status isn’t “online” well past their normal hours. I occasionally have to remind them to log off and go have a life if they’re working too late.

I’ve also had to check in with my onshore colleagues when they send messages well outside of hours to make sure that they’re doing alright, that they don’t feel overwhelmed with work, and that they aren’t doing too much outside of normal hours.

When leading a team (or multiple teams), it’s literally part of my job to make sure that my people have what they need. This includes having enough time off to recharge, be people, and live their lives.

If anyone tells you that it isn’t your job to be concerned for the wellbeing of the people who report to you, you have my permission to tell them to pound sand (using whatever level of politeness you feel is appropriate at the time). People like that shouldn’t be in leadership positions.

Work is not, and should not be, the only thing in your life. We are whole people who spend part of our waking hours working in order to be able to live our lives. And I think that we’re finally starting to realize that again as a society.

It’s long past time that this expectation of overwork stop, and the only ones able to stop it are us. Value yourself and those around you – especially the people that report to you. You help set the tone for what is expected and acceptable.
Are You REALLY Listening? Probably Not.

December 12th, 2022

One of the most underrated skills as a leader, and indeed in business in general, is listening. Actually listening.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t do it very well. We may think that we do. We may even retain information that was said, but we aren’t really listening. At best, most of us are simply waiting for our turn to speak – partially because in this society, being heard is more valued than listening to others.

The type of not listening takes a number of forms.

On the far end of the spectrum is where we actively ignore people. We aren’t listening and we make our disinterest in what the other person is saying clear.

Then you have the situations where we pretend to listen, but aren’t retaining any information that the other person is saying. If someone’s doing this, you can sometimes see their eyes glaze over, or they might be pretending to take notes on their laptop, but they’re actually doing other things. This is commonly seen during meetings though it also happens in other situations.

Farther down the spectrum is where we retain information from what the other person is saying, but we still aren’t actually listening.

Some people will argue that this is listening, but they’d be wrong. It’s a necessary part of listening, but it isn’t listening.

Retaining information means that you’ve heard someone. That’s not the same thing.

You haven’t listened until the other person feels like you have.

That’s it. That’s the secret.

Your own perception has nothing to do with it. Whether or not you’ve listened depends entirely on the perception of the person you’re listening to.

One of the more straightforward ways to arrive at a place where the other person feels heard is to be an active listener. Ask questions. Summarize in your own words what you think they’re trying to convey. Be involved in the conversation instead of just passively sitting there.

It’s a display of empathy and interest.

If you’re actively involved in the conversation (instead of just waiting for your turn to speak or talking over someone), they’re much more likely to feel heard. This not only makes most people more positively disposed toward you, it often leads to them revealing information that they may not intend to.

In business, both of these things can be absolutely invaluable. Having them think well of you makes them more likely to cooperate with you. Getting unintended pieces of information can help you see the bigger picture or even give you an edge in negotiations.

Even if we aren’t taught it explicitly, the implicit lesson that we learn as we grow up is that the person speaking is the one who has the power because other people stop what they’re doing and pay attention to the one speaking. How many times as a kid did you hear some variation of the admonition “I’m SPEAKING” come out of the mouth of one of your teachers or other authority figures. They’re just leaving the “that means I’m more important than you” part of the sentence unsaid.

And that’s what a lot of us internalize as we grow up. (Though you’ll notice that the same people who make the demand of “I’m SPEAKING” often don’t care about listening when anyone else speaks. This isn’t a sign of strength and authority. It’s actually a sign of weakness and fear.)

The truth is that the person who’s listening can often gain even more power because they’re able to build relationships, see the larger picture, and negotiate more effectively.

As a bonus, the applications of listening go beyond business and into most aspects of our lives where they involve other people.

Isn’t that reason enough to stop hearing and start listening?

Category: Leadership

It’s a Meaningless Claim

You Wouldn’t Want To Work There

What to do Instead?

Things That Help Foster Psychological Safety

Things That Destroy Psychological Safety