Listening is Language and What People Hear Before You Ever Say a Word
Dr. Donya Ball is a renowned leadership expert, keynote speaker, author, executive coach, and professor specializing in organizational development. She captivates audiences and readers around the world with her thought leadership, including her TEDx Talk, "We are facing a leadership crisis. Here's the cure."
People do not experience our care through what we intend. They experience it through how we listen. Leaders may believe they are good listeners. They are silent while someone else speaks. They make eye contact. They nod. They wait for an opening. Then, when it is their turn, they respond.
If they heard the words, why does the other person still walk away feeling unheard? This disconnect is important.
Hearing is physical. Listening is relational. Hearing gives us information. Listening communicates whether someone’s perspective is safe to share, worth listening to, and valued.
Listening is more than just something we do before we speak. Listening is language. It implies patience or impatience. Curiosity or judgment. Respect or dismissal. Presence or distraction.
Long before a leader gives an answer, the way they listen has already communicated a response.
Silence is not the same as listening
Silence can look like listening. Sometimes, it is just delayed talking.
We can be completely quiet while mentally building our defense, solving the problem, judging the decision, or preparing to prove that our perspective is more accurate. Our mouth is closed, but our attention has already left the conversation.
Psychologists Carl Rogers and Richard Farson described active listening as an attempt to understand both the meaning and emotional content of a message. It’s not just waiting for our turn. It requires the temporary suspension of our own conclusions.
Strong listeners are not empty. They are engaged. They notice the words, the emotion, the hesitation, the contradictions, and the context. They ask themselves: What is this person trying to help me understand?
A quiet leader may still be preparing to respond. A listening leader is preparing to understand.
People hear how you listen
Every listening behavior sends a message.
Checking a phone says, this can wait. Interrupting says, my thoughts matter more. Finishing someone’s sentence says, I already know what you are going to say. Immediately giving a solution says, the problem matters more than your experience of it. Being defensive says honesty comes at a price.
None of those messages have to be spoken aloud to be received.
The opposite is also true. Putting distractions away shows presence. A follow-up question signals interest. A pause signals patience. Reflecting back what was heard communicates care. Thanking someone for being candid communicates safety.
Our listening is part of the emotional environment people experience around us. Over time, they learn to deliver the truth, soften it, delay it, or stop bringing it altogether.
Leaders often wonder why people didn’t speak sooner. The better question might be: What did my previous responses teach them about speaking to me?
The cost of listening to respond
Listening to respond is fast. It is also expensive.
When we only listen for the point we want to respond to, we shrink a whole message to the point that is most convenient for us. We hear the complaint but miss the disappointment. We hear the mistake but miss the confusion that created it. We hear resistance but miss the fear behind it. We hear a challenge to our decision but miss an effort to protect the organization.
That is how preventable misunderstandings become unnecessary conflicts.
A leader who is rushing to respond may confidently arrive at the wrong solution. The employee who needed clarity gets corrected. The colleague who needed acknowledgement gets advice. The team member who identified a risk gets a defense of the original plan.
Leaders are quick to give an answer. When their understanding is accurate, their leadership is on point.
When their understanding is inaccurate, conflict can follow. Listening is one of the ways we gain clarity.
Listening does not mean agreement
One of the reasons leaders struggle with listening is that they confuse understanding with agreement.
They worry that accepting another person’s perspective means endorsing it. They believe empathy requires them to concede their judgment, lower a benchmark, reverse a decision, or accept behavior that should be addressed.
It does not.
We can see why someone is frustrated and still hold the line. We can understand the pressures behind a bad decision and still ask for accountability. We can listen carefully to a different perspective and still come to a different conclusion.
Listening says: I am willing to understand how you arrived here. Agreement says: I share your conclusion. Those are not the same commitment.
People are more inclined to accept a difficult answer if they know their perspective was truly taken into account. But feeling heard doesn’t guarantee people will like the decision. It enables them to trust the process that produced it.
Listen for what is not being said
Important messages rarely arrive perfectly packaged.
People hesitate. They minimize. They circle the point. They lead with a small concern to check whether it is safe to disclose the larger one. They say they are fine when their behavior tells a different story. Empathy helps a leader hear beyond the first sentence.
The missed deadline may not be laziness. A sharp response may not be disrespect. The silence in the meeting may not be agreement. The repeated question may not be confusion. Behavior is information, but it is not always the whole explanation.
This is not about telling a story for someone else or excusing poor performance. It is about staying curious long enough to ensure an assumption is not mistaken for a fact.
What am I missing? What feels most important about this to you? What would you like me to understand before I respond?
The quality of the question often determines the quality of what we are trusted to hear.
Curiosity must come before conclusion
The greatest threat to listening is not noise. It is certainty.
When we believe that we already know what someone means, why they act that way, or what they are going to say next, listening stops being necessary. We stop gathering information and start gathering evidence for what we have already concluded.
This is especially dangerous for experienced leaders. Experience helps us spot patterns, but it can also tempt us to treat familiar patterns as identical situations. We have seen something similar, so we assume we have seen this.
Curiosity is the cure here. Instead of asking, How do I correct this? curiosity asks, What happened? Instead of deciding, They don’t care, curiosity asks, What is getting in the way? Instead of concluding, They are being difficult, curiosity asks, What concern are they trying to protect?
Assumptions close the conversation. Curiosity gives the truth somewhere to land.
The response completes the listening
Listening is not complete when the other person stops talking. It is complete when our response shows what we understood.
That may sound like: What I hear you saying is... The part that seems most important is... It sounds like this affected you by... Here is what I understand, and here is what I still need to clarify.
Reflecting is not parroting. It is checking for accuracy before acting on an interpretation.
And then there is the follow-up. If we say we heard a concern but never address it, clarify it, or explain what will happen next, our words eventually lose credibility. Empathy without a response can begin to feel performative.
Not every conversation will lead to the outcome that someone wants. Every conversation can produce clarity about what was heard, what was decided, and what happens next.
That is how listening becomes trust.
The listening check
Before responding, leaders can ask themselves five questions:
Am I listening to understand, or am I waiting to defend?
What emotion or concern may be underneath the words?
What assumption am I making that I need to check?
Can I accurately explain this person’s perspective, even if I disagree with it?
What will my response teach this person about speaking honestly with me again?
These questions do not make difficult conversations easy. They make our leadership inside those conversations more intentional.
The leadership reality
People don’t need leaders who agree with everything they say. They need leaders who care enough to understand what they are saying before deciding what to do with it.
Listen for the facts. Listen for the feeling. Listen for the concern behind the resistance. Listen for the truth that might be difficult to communicate. Ask one more question. Allow one more pause. Check the assumption before acting on it.
Because every time someone speaks to a leader, the leader is answering a question that was never asked aloud, "Is it safe to be honest here?"
The answer we give lies not only in the words we choose next. It is also in how we listened before we ever replied.
Listening is language. Make sure yours conveys that people matter.
Read more from Dr. Donya Ball
Dr. Donya Ball, Leadership Expert, Keynote Speaker & Best-Selling Author
Dr. Donya Ball is a renowned keynote speaker, transformative superintendent, and passionate author. With over two decades of experience, she also serves as a professor and executive coach, mentoring and guiding aspiring and seasoned leaders. She has authored two impactful books, Adjusting the Sails (2022) and Against the Wind (2023), which address real-world leadership challenges. Her expertise has garnered national attention from media outlets like USA Today and MSN. Dr. Ball’s TEDxTalk, "We are facing a leadership crisis. Here’s the cure," further highlights her thought leadership.
