Showing up differently

If anyone had asked, I’d have said I was a good listener at work.

Engaged. Responsive. I asked questions. Remembered details. From the outside it probably looked like genuine attention.

It took a while to understand what I was actually doing.

Before every significant conversation, without realising, I created a hole. A shape that the conversation needed to fill. And as people spoke, my mind ran everything through a filter to determine whether it fitted. Was it the right shape? And discarded anything that didn't.

That wasn’t listening, it was auditing. A conversation was happening but I was only receiving the parts that confirmed what I'd already decided it was about.

Everything else, the thing said slightly sideways, the hesitation, the tangent that didn't seem relevant was filtered out. Filed away as noise before it had a chance to be anything else.

And what I didn't understand at the time was the person across from me could feel it.

Not consciously. They couldn't have named it. But people know when a conversation has a destination they’re being steered towards. When they're being heard selectively and they give you less.

What changed things wasn't time. It was intention. I got genuinely curious about what was going on for the person in front of me — not what they were saying, but what was underneath it. And somewhere in that process I stopped needing the conversation to confirm what I already thought. I didn't need the hole anymore.

And what happened to the conversations was immediate.

They became spacious in a way they hadn't been before. People went further than I expected. Said things they probably hadn't planned to say.

Sat with questions longer rather than rushing to answers. The silence stopped feeling like a gap to fill and started feeling like a place where something could arrive... if I didn't interrupt it.

Curiosity replaced agenda. And it turned out curiosity was a far better guide.

That shift changed every conversation. With clients. With colleagues. With people I love. 

When you find it, you don't go back.

In your most important conversations, are you listening — or auditing?

Showing up differently...