I recently heard an aggressive investor confess that sometimes leadership teams “need to go slow to go fast.” He was talking about a plan—to which he was initially resistant—of one of his companies holding an offsite in which 50% of the content had nothing to do with solving the company’s many critical issues. This time was instead focused on having the numerous new team members strengthen their relationships with each other.

During this 50% “of fluff,” as the investor originally termed it, the team members were learning to listen to each other so that they could learn about each other, share insights and observations, and gain the ability to more effectively leverage each others experiences and expertise.

What changed his mind was the statement that “if we go slow for three days, we can go faster for six months.” That is, if a team knows and trusts each other, such relationships pay dividends when challenges and obstacles grow larger.

In this respect, one skill especially stands out: the habit of listening to learn.

Granted, this is not the only reason to listen. But it is often an underutilized skill. Consider this thought exercise…

Imagine that you spent an entire day with the intention to listen only for the purpose of learning. In other words, during this day, you would not spend your time listening to:

●      formulate your counterargument
●      convince someone
●      see if they are going to do what you want
●      test if you can trust them
●      spot your earliest possible opportunity to start talking again

If you actually spent a day in this manner, my guess is you would be surprised at how little time you spend listening to learn.

We like to think we are open-minded and objective, but that is often not the case. Give it a shot, what will you learn by letting go of your agenda even briefly?