What Does That Say to You?

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Sometimes I need to just keep my mouth shut. So do you.

Every thought or great insight you may have doesn’t need to be shared.

It’s key to coaching leaders: active listening.

When I coach leaders, I almost always have something I want to say or add to the conversation. Yet that’s not my primary role as a coach. I’m not there to teach or mentor, I’m there to coach. This means that I’m focused on raising awareness by asking powerful questions.

I was taught the 80/20 rule when I went through a coach training program. The idea was that coaches should listen 80% of the time and talk only 20% of the time. That means in a 60 minute conversation, I would ask questions and guide the process for less than 12 minutes.

Over the past few years I’ve been working on saying even less.

Today in a conversation with a church planter, I had the opportunity to make a brief observation about his behavior. Instead of saying any more, I simply asked:

What does that say to you?

What I think is less important than what awareness he has of his situation.

So that’s when I leave my thoughts to myself and help raise further awareness.

What about you?

How can you help others to see for themselves?

How can you keep people from becoming dependent on you and your insights and observations?

How can you guide people to listen more to what the Spirit is saying to them than what you could say?

Maybe we both need to just keep our mouths shut.