Why Leaders Should Talk Less and Listen More

Malcolm Gladwell, author of a couple great (and best-selling) books including The Tipping Point, recently shared his greatest triumph. Maybe it's because I'm a little older than he is (by about 18 months, best as I can tell), but as I look back on my 20+ years in leadership, what jumps out at me is the stuff I'd do differently. For starters, I wouldn't talk so much.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't talk at all. There are times when a leader really needs to talk. Shout, even. Like when the building's on fire. Or people are headed in a hurry down the wrong path and somebody might get hurt. Plus, I'm a pretty good talker. It's one of the gifts God has given me and I think I have a responsibility to use it. But I would use it a lot more carefully if I had it all to do over again.

Over the years I've discovered that, if I can manage to shut up long enough, somebody just as smart as me will say what I would have said. And it'll be even better because it's come from within the group. More often than I'd like to admit, they even say something smarter.

Frankly, I wish I'd spent a lot more time asking purposeful questions than spouting off about this, that or the other thing. A purposeful question invites people to wrestle together with the things that really matter. In the most generic sense, they sound like this:

• Who are we?
• Why are we here?
• Where is here?
• What really matters to us?
• What directions are we being called to focus our time, attention, and resources?

When you're sitting in a meeting dealing with budgets, programming, staffing, and the like, they can sound like this:

• Does this decision seem to emerge from our core, shared sense of purpose?
• How can our guiding principles help us make this decision?
• Is what we're doing/proposing in alignment with our strategic directions?

I'd ask these kinds of questions a lot more often, instead of jumping in with my opinion about the matter. And then I'd do everything in my power to make sure people had a chance to have a real conversation about it. I'd gently nudge the shy folks to share their thoughts. I'd poke the folks who talked too much. If the conversation was too lopsided, I'd suggest that people have a chance to write down what they were thinking before I asked them to say it out loud. I'd insist that people be respectful of each other, even when they disagreed. I'd smile and serve cookies, because somehow that always makes it feel safer to share what you're really thinking. And I'd trust 'em.

If you're a leader who spends more time talking than listening, let me ask you a purposeful question: How's that working for ya?