Teachings from the Vault
Listening (2015)
Lee Campbell makes the case that listening is a skill leaders have to develop on purpose — we listen to understand, to love (because people feel loved when they're heard), to influence and be influenced, and often to finally be heard ourselves. He starts with humility as the prerequisite, drawing on both Scripture and research into selective attention, memory, and how quickly our brains generate self-justifying stories about our own behavior. From there he gets practical: what it means to turn toward someone rather than turn away or turn against them, how to notice things out loud instead of jumping to conclusions, how to validate someone's feelings without necessarily agreeing with them, and how to steer a conversation past blame and defensiveness back toward what the person actually experienced. Listening doesn't replace bringing truth or correction — it makes both land with more weight, because you've listened first. Speaker: Lee Campbell
