Are You Listening to What Isn’t Being Said?

Recently, I coached a person that wanted to make a job change. Their last two positions were with extraordinary opportunities at an executive level but after a while, it became apparent that the business owners were challenging to work with – in one case untrustworthy, and the other case demeaning.

After asking my client to take me back to visualizing the actual interviews, we walked through in detail the process for both.   As these situations were described, all the right things were talked about. The job was lucrative, the work exciting, and the team smart and supportive. It checked all the boxes.

Then I asked, When you first met with the owner, what sense did you get of what wasn’t being said?

The first answer was, Well… Nothing.

I persisted, What feeling did you get from this person that wasn’t about anything being discussed?

Ideas started to come slowly… And then a flood. There were many nuances to information obtained, small subtleties like actions, a sense of who the person was or thoughts that came and went during that time that were disregarded. 

It was recognized that these nuances could’ve been indicators of either red flags for follow up, or an all-out decision to not continue with the interview process.   This became eye-opening for my client.

For most of our lives, we are trained (and rewarded) for tactical items – what gets done or exact communication. But taking a moment (or maybe a few moments) to think about what isn’t being said, opens up additional information that can help us learn more about a situation and  avoid potential pitfalls.  This can be used in virtually any situation from interviewing, to assessing our kids, to determining best times to have conversations.

After listening to what isn’t being said, good follow-up questions are:

Do I trust my intuition with this additional information?

Do I want to take action with it? Is now the best time? And if so, what do I want to do?

We can’t always assess every situation or person perfectly, but identifying what isn’t being said utilizes more of your personal arsenal for meaning, connection, and success.

This is you.  Illuminated.