Who Has Your Ear? The Leadership Habit That Can Build a Team or Quietly Divide One
We Become Our Conversations
Every leader faces this scenario, probably more often than we realize.
Someone asks you to grab coffee, invites you to lunch, or catches you in the hallway with, "Do you have a minute?" Then comes, "I probably shouldn't say this, but..." or "Have you noticed..." or "I just thought you should know..."
Now they have your ear, and what happens next matters.
Stand Guard
One of the greatest responsibilities of leadership is deciding who gets access to your time, your thinking, and your influence. Conversations have a way of following us long after they end.
A comment about a colleague becomes a thought. That thought becomes a suspicion. Suddenly, you walk into the next meeting looking at someone differently, and that person has no idea a conversation about them ever took place.
One conversation can shift how a leader sees another person. That is why leaders must stand guard.
Four Questions to Run Everything Through
When someone starts talking to me about another person, a situation, a decision, or a problem, I try to run what I am hearing through four questions:
Is it true?
Is it kind?
Is it helpful?
Does it unify?
That fourth question is especially important.
Leaders are called to bring people together around work that matters. Something can be true and still be shared to create division. Something can sound helpful while quietly planting doubt. Concern can even become a disguise for recruiting you into someone else's frustration.
Ask yourself what the conversation is actually trying to accomplish. Is it helping me understand someone better, solve a problem, serve people, or strengthen the team? Or is someone planting a seed that could cause me to think less of another person?
Are They Watering a Garden or Poisoning a Well?
Are they helping you see greatness in another person, or trying to convince you that greatness is not there? Are they bringing solutions, encouragement, perspective, and possibilities, or are they bringing gossip, blame, complaints, cliques, hidden motives, and an axe to grind?
Yuck.
I do not want that growing in me, and I certainly do not want to spread it to others. Weed that garden quickly. What we feed grows. What we model spreads.
I want conversations that connect people, help them grow, celebrate great work, solve real problems, create possibilities, and offer encouragement. Those are the conversations that strengthen people and organizations.
The goal is not to become suspicious of everyone who wants to talk. The goal is to recognize the power of what we hear and what we carry forward.
What Follows You Out of the Conversation?
Before you race to the next meeting, email, phone call, or task, think about what just happened.
Did that conversation change me? How? Why? Am I looking at someone differently than I was ten minutes ago? Did I learn something I genuinely needed to know, or did someone simply hand me their frustration?
I bet a conversation just came to mind. Someone said something, and it changed the way you looked at another person. Maybe you learned something you needed to know. Or maybe someone handed you an opinion that was never meant to become yours.
We become our conversations. We become the stories we repeatedly hear and the voices we give weight to. If we are not careful, we can begin carrying assumptions that someone else handed us.
That is why we have to see people for ourselves.
Listen when necessary. Investigate when appropriate. Address real problems when they exist. Great leaders do not ignore legitimate concerns, but they also refuse to outsource their judgment.
Get to know people yourself. Watch how they serve others. Notice how they show up. Talk with them. Let people show you who they are instead of allowing someone else to write their story for you.
When someone speaks positively about another person, make that conversation travel too. Go find that person and say, "Someone spoke really highly of you when you were not in the room."
Think about the culture we could create if people regularly discovered that their colleagues were bragging about them behind their backs. That is a conversation worth spreading.
When Someone Starts Going Negative
1. Do Not Join In
Refuse the invitation to pile on. You do not have to add your complaint because someone handed you theirs. When leaders join in, they give permission for the conversation to continue.
2. Say Something Positive
Put some light back into the conversation. You might say, "I have actually had a really positive experience working with her," or, "Something I really appreciate about him is..."
You do not need to argue or embarrass anyone. You are simply reminding the room that people are bigger than someone else's complaint about them.
3. Find an Exit
Move the conversation somewhere useful. Ask, "Have you talked with that person directly?" or "What would a good solution look like?" or "What can we do to make this better?"
Sometimes the right response is simply, "I do not think this conversation is helping us." If it refuses to become productive, move on.
4. Let Your Standard Show
Sometimes it is a look. Sometimes it is a pause. Sometimes it is saying, "I do not love where this conversation is going."
You do not need to deliver a speech. People are watching the leader, and they are learning what gets rewarded, repeated, and tolerated.
5. Lead
Teach people how we talk to one another by showing them. Celebrate people. Redirect gossip. Stop blame. Ask better questions. Refuse to participate in cliques.
Speak about someone behind their back with the same respect you would show if they were sitting right beside you. Do not merely survive a negative conversation. Lead it somewhere better.
Be intentional about whose voices carry weight with you. Not everyone deserves the same influence over your thinking. Choose people who challenge you to become better without asking you to think less of someone else.
Brag on people behind their backs. Celebrate greatness when you see it. Stop gossip, blame, complaints, and cliques. Serve people well. Model the kind of conversations you want repeated when you are not in the room.
Who has your ear matters because what gets your ear eventually gets access to your thinking, your decisions, and your leadership.
Let's Do This Work Together
If this made you think about your school, organization, team, or your own leadership, I would love to work with you. Invite me to speak at your event, bring me in to work with your team, join one of my leadership cohorts, or work with me one to one. I'm Kelly Croy, educator, author, and speaker, and you can learn more about my books, speaking, coaching, and leadership work at KellyCroy.com.
Leadership matters. Let's give this world something worth following.
~Kelly Croy
Speaker • Author • Educator
