Talk Less, Listen More | Hacker News Reader

Talk Less, Listen More

thereformedbroker.com

132 pointspaulpauper29 comments

Pushing 45 now, having worked in a lot of industries, I say this is bad advice. Most people who want you to talk less and listen more are just trying to control you and in corporate landscapes, never ever assume anyone is trying to help you.

I wasted a lot of years staying silent, reminding myself that other people know more than me. Actually, all the smart, competent people were the ones being quiet in the first place, and all the people saying “talk less, listen more” like they are life coach gurus turned out to be the overconfident know-it-alls and people with duplicitous motives.

The problem is that a lot of young people are smart and have great ideas that more experienced people didn’t have. But because the young people don’t have political capital, the older people need a way to set up political gatekeeping and launder credit for sourcing the ideas from younger people.

It’s near impossible to truly tell if you’re dealing with that level of political dirtbag (usually yes) or if you’re dealing with rare good-natured people who want to give you real advice. So in the prisoner’s dilemma of it, young people have no rational choice but to defect and push for their own agendas. And they should.

When I meet young people now, I try to remind myself: they need to be heard, they need to talk. I need to listen. I shouldn’t patronize them by saying, “talk less, listen more.” I should presume they are equals, and keep my opinions private if their youthful exuberance causes them to put their foot in their mouth. They need to speak and be heard to grow, and I shouldn’t be set in my ways and miss the good ideas that occur to generations who experienced a whole different world and landscape in their formative years. Their perspective adds to mine, it doesn’t need me to correct it.

> Listen to your potential new client. Let them speak. Let them feel seen and heard.

The post seems to be talking more about from a sales / client relationship development perspective.

Your reply seems to be more about internal comms on a team.

No, the author is pretty clear. They take issue with verbiage they personally hear from younger people. Here is a quote from the article:

> “ The first thing I tell them is to talk less and listen more. I don’t know if this is a generational thing or they’re just nervous to talk to me or what, but most of these conversations begin with me getting machine gunned to death with someone’s line of shit right out of the gates. Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang…bang…bang bang bang bang… I’m thinking to myself, “Oh my god, take a breath, kid.” Maybe I sounded that way in my twenties too – being excited, feeling like everyone wanted to hear every thought I had on every subject under the sun. I don’t remember. So I give them the best advice I can think of for building a practice in financial advice and developing client relationships. First of all, I says, “You don’t even know what the f* you don’t know.””

So it does not seem the author is talking about sales / client relations, at least that isn’t the primary issue they raise and the context of when they advise younger people to be quiet and listen is very different than any sales / client relations context.

Literally, the rest of the article contradicts your assertion. He’s talking about client relationships, specifically in financial services.

As a counterpoint to your cynical take on internal comms, at 54 I’ve found that treating everyone as a “client” and erring on the side of listening vs talking has paid huge dividends professionally.

The context of your quote is someone coming to him for advice, and proceeding to monologue at him.

Why would you go to someone for advice, unless you think they they have something of value to say?

There's some insight here but it's a separate subject entirely.

In most situations, you learn by listening.

The challenge not offered in the article is to 'get them talking' in the first place if they are not natural talkers.

Finally - your points are salient on some level, but absorbing corporate schtick is not what this is about. Also, it's too cynical. Corporate schtick is just another form of communication, it's less personal, less direct, but it's also not evil.

Young people need to communication, but they will benefit from your experience much more than the other way around.

I recognize much of what you say. Worst experience I have is with devs who call themselves 'coach' and know it all. They should be quiet more often.

At the same time, I have this junior dev in my team who is very stubborn and never listens. This is very annoying, she can work days on a single small assignment. When I give advise on how the problem can be tackled I see it is just being ignored.

So, in these cases 'listen more' is good advise :)

I think it's actually cliche', and I'm sure I didn't say it first, but I sell with my ears. This may be specific to B2B markets, but my customers place a high degree of trust in my company's products. If our products fail, large customers will fire teams, small customers will go out of business.

In order to be trusted, my customers have to be confident that I understand their technical and business needs. In some cases, even personal needs as relates to their career.

I cannot build enough trust without a healthy dose of listening and answering questions. And yes, even if I don't know the answer to a question, saying I don't know, but I will get the answer by a specific date, and then doing so, is the most effective approach to building trust that I've found in 30 years.

Woah. I wish people like you replace the sales people I deal with almost on a daily basis. It’s like a bunch of vultures trying to rip into my wallet. This is in B2B context with $1M+ sales accounts.

Sales people need to get the fuck off of my lawn. I hate every single one of them on a personal visceral level since they’ve ruined the quality of my professional life. I am forced to deal with these half-baked professionals because we have no choice. Stop aggressively trying to sell shit. Your metrics are probably better, but you’re a nuisance to otherwise kind, calm business conduct.

Works everywhere all the time. It is common sense but people are so nervous and insecure especially in sales that they believe talking would somehow build credibility. To be more effective they have to listen with a clear intent on addressing what is going on in the speakers mind / life so they can provide an apt solution.

I agree- I always keep this in mind when I am doing interviews. Its the interviewees that keep talking and talking about everything they have done that I lose interest in! Its the ones who ask me the questions and listen that I have interest.

The issue is that this works only if they have a good product or solution to meet the clients needs. Unfortunately, today's sales training involve trying to sell or oversell things you don't need too. And that's where all the bullshit and manipulation starts coming in.

I think it's brilliant advice to young people to not try to seem like an expert when they clearly aren't one. When you're dealing with people who are familiar with your subject, you can't fake it until you make it - you're 22 and they have a pretty good idea of how little a 22 year old is going to know.

The good news is that also means they have reasonable expectations of you - be helpful and thoughtful, and they'll appreciate it. Bullshit like you know everything, and they'll think you're a dumbass.

The caveat, of course, is there are 22 year olds who know your subject better than you. I met those, and I wished they talked more.

It doesn't hurt to be humble, there is always someone who knows more.

1/1000

The problem is companies/teams only want to hire 22 year old "experts". Try interviewing as a 22 year old and admitting you aren't one; your interviewers will think you're a dumbass.

I think it depends on the person, but for me it's the opposite. Many a times I've been told that I should speak more often because I have good insights. So apparently what I think of as trivial and not worthy of discussion, others find quite useful or captivating.

So I think the better advice would be to do both talking and listening in correct amounts, depending on the circumstances

I'd say it's opposite in dev community, where fresh developers come in from uni and if they only listen (and that's what they normally do) it is super complicated to track what level they are on. Guess it's a different in other industries where in software development we see more intraverts. I tend to encourage talking and making questions unless it's really unstoppable nonsense :)

Hmm. Most likely. He was talking about fresh graduates not having people knowledge. That is probably less relevant in software development.

Two ears one mouth use them in proportion as nature intended.

Listen before you talk. Listen at the right time, talk at the right time, and take care with your words.

I realised after few years, that's what good managers do. They mostly ask right questions and let the team make the decisions and solutions. This way team owns it and have greater sense of ownership... By probing correctly you arrive at decisions rather than directly telling decisions. This works. Speak less and listen more.

I agree that a manager like that is better than a micromanager, but ultimately what I want (and what they deserve higher pay for) in a manager is leadership. Leadership means that they make some of the tough decisions and fess up to them later.

I've worked with managers who only asked questions and let the team decide everything. The problem is that the team is generally already stretched really thin and isn't really free (in terms of workload) or equipped to make decisions. When the manager essentially delegates all of the ugly and messy work to the team (i.e. decision-making) I end up wondering what they're actually doing.

It's one thing to ask and field questions about what everyone thinks about a subject in order to make decisions (and maybe that's what you meant), but in my experience the second part rarely happens. Maybe it's just me, but I feel overwhelmed with being asked a bunch of questions when I actually desire concrete guidance or direction. Granted that's a case by case thing but I feel that managers who do the former aren't that good at the latter in times of need.

I always admired the "management strategy" of Captain Picard in Star Trek TNG. He asked for advice, listened to people he trusted, and then made a decision that he took total responsibility for. He was always willing to listen, but there was no confusion about who had the ultimate authority. Also, he trusted domain experts to do their work without micromanaging them, but didn't hesitate to bring them into line if they strayed too far from the team's objectives.

So true. Being quiet and gentle, listening carefully to someone else talking, this is still always and will always be a good social practise.

Intellectually, delivering a monologue is much easier than understanding the other also.

Sometimes, good advice. Hard to tell when, and hard to simplify deciding not to.

> Maybe I sounded that way in my twenties too

I'm sure I talked a lot in my twenties if it was about something I was passionate about.

In interviews- not so much, though. I was just hoping to get the job.

What I really enjoy are not just the people that are utterly incapable and uninterested in listening but those people who tell you what your opinions are. I extra love when they are somehow astonished that not everybody mindlessly falls into absolute agreement, perhaps as though not everybody concedes to their narcissism. This appears most evident as an entitlement thing from having followers without challenges to retain their position/status.

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