The Urgency of Listening to Now
What does work mean to you?
My own complex answer to this simple question surprised me. And I imagine yesterday’s answer differed from the one I would have given three months ago.
Can you say you know how your employees and colleagues will answer that question today?
Do you have a sense of how your employees are assigning meaning to what is now happening inside your institution? Or how your colleagues’ sense of meaning differs from yours?
It’s important that you do. Your future rests on the present. Transformation, innovation, and progress will depend upon how much you listen now.
This liminal time is paramount. In the current gap between ambiguity and possibility, listening is the best form of communication. Only by inviting people to be heard and listening to what they say can you navigate from confusion to coherence and from skepticism to trust.
Both institutionally and individually, we must understand where we are now before we can project where we are going. Future success will only be as solid as our grasp of the present.
Listening is an investment in interest and attention. And it may be difficult to find the time and space to focus on intentional listening right now. But the rewards will be profound.
