Maegan Stephens and Nicole Lowenbraun

But most of the time, you have to learn how to adapt to meet someone else's need.

So the fresh out of college new hire knows when it's appropriate to have small talk with that customer to build the relationship and when it's time to move forward and make the ask to make the sale.

So that people leaders know when everyone on the team is already on the same page, we can rush ahead and...

when they are too tired or angry to be productive anymore, no matter what they might have said to your face.

Great listeners, adaptive listeners, know how to process and respond in the right way at the right time for the person speaking to them.

Yeah, okay, so the opposite of the way I listened to Nicole on our writing retreat.

I was pushing us forward to meet a deadline that didn't really matter.

I needed to be less advanced and more discerned.

And I could have done better, too.

I could have said, Megan, I know you're concerned about this deadline.

I am, too.

But, you know, we really have to rewrite this section.

So let's either do that now or make some time for that later.

Yeah, that would have been much kinder.

But, you know, we hadn't written the book yet, so we weren't wise and we were out of snacks.

So we are going to give each other a pass.

Because being a great listener at work is hard.

Work is messy.

People are messy.

You are all messy.