Weekly Challenge #6: Park Your Thoughts
This post is part of my Weekly Challenge series: a collection of micro-coaching tips and calls to action to enhance your leadership. If you’re joining me for the first time - welcome to your leadership development journey! Get started by clicking on that red box below. From there, I promise to do everything possible to provide the pathways to make you that much better and more effective as a leader.
I spend a lot of time coaching leaders to value their employees and make them feel seen and heard. One key way to value your people at work is to listen and seek understanding. See, effective communication isn't just about talking; it's having the ability to understand what's happening on the other side of the fence. Most people listen with the intent to reply.
THIS WEEK’S IMPLEMENTER CHALLENGE ➡️
To prevent yourself from doing this, there’s one powerful technique you can master with good practice: “park your thoughts."
Here’s what I mean:
When you park your car, it doesn’t drive - it stops. In the same sense, one of the most powerful listening techniques is to put your thoughts in park and seek to know what’s happening with the other person.
This may be one of the hardest things to do as a leader - parking your thoughts in the moment because most of us, in a conversation exchange, are forming a counterargument or point of view that fits with our perspective.
So active listening involves parking your thoughts and being 100% present with the other person. It’s getting out of our heads and quieting our internal voices when it tempts us to cut in, interrupt with a rebuttal, or judge. It’s being locked in and showing the other person that nothing matters at that moment except acknowledging their voice and point of view. You may not agree with what they have to say, but that’s not the point. It’s to make them feel heard and understood. What happens next may actually shift the conversation in a new direction, so be optimistic.
As a next step, take a moment to consider how easy or hard is it for you to “park your thoughts” and be 100% present. In other words, are you able to practice active listening effectively? Let me know in the comments below.