A fellow consultant recently asked me for advice on writing and publishing more consistently. He wasn’t asking me to ghostwrite for him or to edit his work, as I do for many of my clients. He’s an excellent writer and is able to make time for it.
The problem, for him, was keeping his momentum going. He’d mapped out a series of ten topics and planned to write and publish a LinkedIn post about one of them each day until he got to the end of the series. But he only managed to get four posts published. So he wanted my advice on how to keep coming up with new topics, without repeating himself, and without running out of steam.
Part of the problem, he quickly confessed, was that his work might soon be going in a completely new direction. It felt dishonest to him to keep writing in support of his existing business offering while he was considering other possibilities and having discussions with the people who he’d be partnering with. After all, he might be doing a completely different kind of work shortly.
In short, the writing didn’t feel authentic because it wasn’t aligned with what he was actually spending his time thinking about.
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I stopped writing my newsletter consistently after I left VentureBeat because I was embracing a new role in communications, and I didn’t quite know how to balance my old voice with my new role. I held off on writing for a while last year because I was nervous about sharing the more personal, spiritual side of my life, which had grown increasingly significant.
And most recently, I’ve hesitated to write about using AI in writing because I have such mixed feelings about it. I use AI, but I don’t necessarily like what it’s doing to my writing, and I’ve had to figure out ways of using it more intelligently so it doesn’t get the better of me.
In all of these cases, I had to get through a period of discomfort and change. I had to arrive at a point where I was ready to be public about what I’m going through before I felt comfortable writing again. The writing has to reflect what I’m thinking deeply about, or it feels shallow and pointless to me.
I could tell that something like this was going on for my new friend.
The chat turned into a bit of a strategy session, as these conversations about writing often do. Not that I was offering strategic advice to him — I didn’t have any particular expertise in his business. In fact, we’re trading services. He’s going to advise me on some aspects of my business that he knows very well in exchange for the writing help I’m offering him. But in this case, I wasn’t so much a writer and editor as a sounding board, an active listener, and I believe that helped him organize his thinking on the business decisions he may soon have to make.
good listening doesn’t just make you feel better, it can help you think better
Yes, it feels good to be heard. (Perhaps that is what lies at the root of much of our current epidemic of polarization and ill will: People don’t feel heard.) Good listening is profoundly therapeutic. It makes you feel better.
But good listening doesn’t just make you feel better, it can help you think better, too.
I’ve seen this again and again with the people and companies I’ve worked with. I might be helping them with something as prosaic as a press release or as ambitious as a major research report. A big part of the value I bring to them is in our early discussions, where I’m helping them to clarify their goals for the project, define their key messages, and identify the storylines that will grab the attention of journalists, potential customers, or the general public. Until we get into those discussions, and I start listening for what’s important to them, they often don’t have a very clear idea of their projects’ goals or messages.
Some of this work includes sourcing calls. These are journalistic interviews, designed for gathering information, in which I talk with an executive, ask questions, and listen for the story in their answers.
These meetings are not just me running down a list of questions one after another, making notes about the answers I get. If that’s all they were, the clients could just type their answers into a Google doc, or ask ChatGPT to interview them.
The best sourcing calls — the ones that lead to the most compelling stories and the best outcomes — are the ones where I’m able to form a personal connection with the executive and we start having a conversation. That, in turn, helps us both identify the best ideas.
I can tell when someone lights up about a topic. I can see it in their eyes and the way they hold themselves. I can tell when I light up, too, because I feel it, physically: My heart rate increases, I sit up straighter, my eyes open wider, and I might even start bouncing a little bit. That’s a sign that we’ve hit something resonant.
When that happens, I drop the list of questions and start delving into what I’m most curious about. I probe, I ask for explanations; I ask them to tell me how they came to believe what they do, or how this insight might actually work in the real world.
Usually, this kind of engaged conversation leads to a good story. Sometimes it helps the exec articulate their own thinking, too.
I wasn’t always a good listener. I learned the basic principles of active listening as a volunteer peer counselor in college, but I didn’t get good at it until I had been working for some time as a journalist.
To do journalism well, you have to get pretty good at listening for the elements of a good story: a relatable main character, a major conflict or challenge that they’re facing, stakes that are larger than their own personal interest, and some level of emotional resonance to draw readers in.
Of course, you also need to get the facts and interesting details that will make the story informative or even newsworthy. But to get readers to care, you need at least some of the elements of a story, and that comes down to personal details and emotions. You don’t get those without learning to listen well.
So while people think of journalists as people who ask a lot of questions, and that can be true, the best journalists are the ones who know how to listen well for the answers that people care about. Fortunately, that’s a skill you can learn.
Because sometimes, as with my new friend, listening is the most valuable thing we can offer.
