Entry № 40 · Plate xl
On ListeningListening is not the absence of speech; it is the presence of attention.
The quietest room in the house is where the most important things are said.
The explanation
Listening is the most underrated leadership skill. Most people listen with the intent to reply, not the intent to understand. They are simply waiting for the other person to stop making noise so they can resume their own. True listening involves creating a vacuum that the other person feels safe filling. When you allow someone else's feelings to exist without rushing to fix, judge, or minimize them, you are giving them the gift of their own dignity. It is in these silent gaps that the most important information—the 'unspoken'—finally surfaces. To listen is to let the other person become real to you.
The story
My friend Hana called me on a Sunday afternoon, in the aftermath of a hard breakup, and asked if she could come over. She arrived twenty minutes later with red eyes and a container of leftover pad thai. I had, in the intervening twenty minutes, mentally prepared a small arsenal: five reasons her ex was wrong for her, three books that had helped me after mine, a list of concrete next steps she should take in the coming week.
I was, essentially, ready to give a TED talk. She sat down on the far end of my couch, opened her mouth to speak, and started crying instead. I opened my mouth to begin the TED talk. Then, for reasons I do not fully understand, I closed it. I sat with her. I did not fill the silence. I did not offer the reasons. I did not recommend the books.
Occasionally I got up to refill her water. Mostly I just sat, and she cried, and eventually she started talking, and I mostly said things like 'yeah' and 'that sounds awful' and 'I know.' We were there for almost two hours. When she finally stood up to leave, she hugged me at the door, wiped her eyes, and said, 'Thank you for knowing exactly what to say.
' I had said, in total, maybe twelve words. I had, for once in my life, given her the actual gift — a safe silence in which she could finally hear herself.
