SHOW NOTES
Lessons Learned, pt3
Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 163
Lesson #1: Anger is a manifestation of selfishness.
Lesson #2: Slow down.
Lesson #3: Become a listener.
Most Type A leaders are people who are fixers by nature. I am one. We are motivated to fix things. We like people and love people, and when we see brokenness in them, we want to figure out a way to fix that. We look at the world as broken and needing to be fixed, and we want to do something about it.
For most, because we are fixers, we get so focused on what we are going to do that sometimes we often don’t hear people in the midst of it. That doesn’t mean we don’t love and care for people. We certainly do.
Sometimes we can get so focused on the objective, we can forget to take time to hear people.
This younger generation really values being heard. You don’t even have to agree with them. They would like you to agree with them, but if they really believe that you have heard them and are trying to process what they said, that opens their heart to listen to you. They believe you think highly of them, even if you don’t agree with them.
I am not wired that way. I value being agreed with. But the world is not going to condition itself to how you are wired. If you are going to be a difference maker, you have to figure out how that world is wired.
How many times has your wife approached you and asked you to talk about something that you think you’ve already talked about? Your wife values being heard. You might have already heard the facts, analyzed them, and made a decision. But she isn’t necessarily presenting facts. Hear what is in her heart. She is presenting her perception, what she’s feeling. The fixer person jumps in because they already have it handled and have come to a conclusion. That’s not a recipe for victory.
It takes longer to really hear people.
If you are a strong leader like I am, you know what you want to do and where you want to go. So you have to intentionally slow yourself down and really remind yourself that listening gets something accomplished, that you might even learn something and obtain more facts.
I have to remind myself to listen and ask good questions. As a result, I think I’m a much better leader. I think the people around me have a higher trust value. It’s not because I have all the right answers or can quote a bunch of Scriptures. They perceive that I really have taken the time to listen to them, weigh what they said, and am really interested in their thoughts.
Learning to be a great listener is an art and a skill. It is something we can do intentionally. The old saying goes, “There is a reason God gave you two ears and one mouth.”
I’m a preacher. I’m a speaker. There is a motivation in my life to share and talk about what I think is important. Otherwise, I would be pretty poor at what I was doing. The other side of that is that there is a time when you don’t need to talk. There is a time when you need to listen because you’ll hear things that go beyond the facts.
There have been times when Penny and I have walked away from a conversation and she heard things that I didn’t. It’s not because I didn’t hear their words, but I didn’t hear what they were trying to say. I didn’t hear the emotion or the emphasis they were putting on certain words. To be honest, I probably didn’t hear those things because I was too concerned about how I was going to answer. Penny is sitting there thinking about the person, their heart, what they were going through, and she heard the words at a different level than I did.
I have gotten a lot better at this, but it is because I’ve learned from other people. I’ve had people come back to me and tell me thank you for hearing their heart (rather than thanking me for giving them the best answer). Based on my set of skills and my motivational gifts, having the right answer is a high value in my system of operation. But how do you have the right answer if you really haven’t heard the person’s heart?
Listening is really important. Some of my greatest victories were because I listened. Some of my greatest failures were because I didn’t listen (even though sometimes when I didn’t listen, I thought I was listening). Since I’ve become a better listener, I ask better questions.
Learn to be a good listener.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
