Balancing Speaking and Listening
My friend and colleague, Jessica Pena, sent me this management tip from Harvard Business Review, November 14, 2011 by Whitney Johnson:
Listening is a critical, often underutilized skill. 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.
Many of us would be amazed that anyone might need to talk more since there’s so little skilled listening that occurs in many a workplace. But then, I bet we can picture meetings in which the same person sits throughout the entire time without uttering a word.
Alas, there’s no indication the person is listening, all we can observe is that the person isn’t talking. So this tip is excellent in that situation. The lack of talking can be interpreted as disinterest, ignorance, fear, slowness, unwillingness, shyness, unconfident, or even being a misfit.
I coached one brilliant, funny and non-verbal Asian, who, when I asked about her reticence to speak in a group, responded, “I grew up being told the duck that sticks out its neck is supper.” That’s pretty darn hard to overcome. We worked for months on techniques to gradually help her to engage. In the process, I discovered that she wasn’t such a great listener either because she was so petrified someone would ask her a question that she neither spoke nor listened.
As she became more comfortable speaking up, her listening acumen also sharpened, and visa versa.
What’s important about this management tip is to balance listening with speaking and talking with hearing. Neither should overwhelm the other. They are integral parts and in service of one another, and both require practice to master.
