Listen…

Leaders are believers and leaders are connectors; the ones we go through walls for are master connectors. Fact. The skill most missing in modern master connectors is not the ability to speak. We’ve shored up our speaking over the past hundreds of years to the point of pure polish among our most elite. Few world leaders struggle to put words together and spin a story worth listening to. Oh sure, the content may be mostly missing depending on their bias or our own, but eloquence and articulate define their rhapsody of rhetoric.

However, these same spinners of good story are mostly missing the second half of the recipe; they are NOT master listeners. In fact, most of my clients and most leaders I’ve studied spend little time mastering this art. They can’t sit still long enough, with mouth shut, simply studying, understanding, and deeply connecting with their team. Even when tuning in their arms, eyes, and mouth are in motion. Listen, I by no means have mastered this myself. I too am a work in progress, trying to tune in and yet caught up in my mind with so much to say and so little time to do so.

Listen. Tune in like an animal being stalked. And, as my friend durp discovered recently, the recipe for becoming a master listener is revealed in the word itself.

Listen. Look at the word (listen) again. Do you see the recipe in the very word itself? Good. More of that, please…