Active Listening

Most leaders think they're good listeners. I did too.

Then I started paying attention to what I actually did during one-on-ones. I was formulating my response while the other person was still talking. I was waiting for my turn, not listening. There's a difference.

Active listening means you shut up. You focus entirely on the person in front of you. You hear what they say, process it, respond thoughtfully, and remember it later. That last part matters more than people realize.

What changed for me

I started doing three things:

• Pause before responding. Two seconds of silence feels uncomfortable. It also signals that you took their words seriously.
• Repeat back what I heard. Not parroting — distilling. "So what you're saying is..." forces me to actually understand, not just hear.
• Put the laptop away. If you're glancing at Slack while someone talks to you, you're telling them their words don't matter.

Why this matters for engineering leaders

Engineers bring you hard problems. Architectural trade-offs. Team friction. Career frustrations. If you half-listen, you'll give surface-level answers to deep questions. Your team will stop bringing you the real stuff.

The irony is that the higher you climb, the louder everything gets — more meetings, more Slack channels, more stakeholders. And the louder it gets, the harder you have to fight to actually listen.

I've seen more trust built in a single well-listened conversation than in months of status updates and team lunches. Listening is not passive. It's the hardest active skill a leader can develop.