Listen Before You Lead: Clarity Over Control - Ep. 27

Leadership communication isn't about speaking well or being persuasive; it’s the disciplined practice of understanding before trying to be understood. In this debrief, Jarome dismantles the common misconception that communication is simply the transfer of words, revealing it as the transfer of meaning. He introduces the "leader's temptation" - the urge to jump into correction and solution-mode, and explains how this single impulse can create a vicious cycle of misalignment and disengagement. By reframing listening as a strategic act of data gathering and risk management, Jarome provides a new operating system for leaders to solve the right problems, build psychological safety, and foster a culture of genuine ownership.

✨ Why This Matters for You

For founders and operators, mastering this communication philosophy is the difference between a team that complies and a team that commits. Here’s the perspective shift you’ll gain:

• You will learn to identify how most "execution problems" are actually communication problems in disguise, allowing you to solve the root cause, not just the symptoms.
• You will move from a default mode of control, which breeds compliance, to a system of clarity that creates true ownership and a healthier culture.
• You will reframe listening from a "soft skill" into your most powerful tool for risk management, pattern recognition, and uncovering the fragile points in your organization.

📝 Key Takeaways

• The Leader's Temptation: This is the innate urge for a leader—who often has more context and is steps ahead—to immediately correct, direct, or solve a problem. Succumbing to this temptation means you skip the crucial diagnostic step, often leading you to solve the wrong problem with confidence and damage team trust.
• Seek First to Understand: This is the core principle for effective leadership communication. By prioritizing listening and making a genuine effort to understand your team's perspective, you lower their defensiveness, create psychological safety, and gain access to higher-quality information that separates symptoms from root causes.
• Listening as a Strategic Advantage: Far from being a soft skill, intentional listening is a form of data gathering, pattern recognition, and risk management. It reveals where trust is strong, where processes are broken, and allows you to hear about issues before they become organizational fires.

🚀 Put It Into Action

• Rephrase Your Questions for Understanding. Instead of asking "Why didn't you get this done?", shift your language to invite context. Try using phrases like, "Help me understand what got in the way," "Walk me through your thought process," or "What part of this feels difficult?"
• Practice the Pause-Reflect-Clarify Loop. The next time you feel the urge to immediately respond or correct, consciously pause. Reflect by repeating back what you heard ("Here's what I'm hearing, is that correct?"), then clarify any missing pieces before attempting to align on a goal or make a decision.
• Decouple Understanding from Correction. Make a deliberate effort to separate the act of listening from the act of fixing. When a team member shares their reasoning after you’ve prompted them, do not immediately follow their explanation with a correction. This sequencing builds trust and ensures they don't associate being open with being disciplined.

🔗 Stay Connected

• Subscribe to the No Trade Secrets podcast so you never miss an episode.
• Connect with Jarome on LinkedIn
• Share this episode with a fellow founder who is building with intention.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another No Trade Secrets Debrief Session. Today, I want to talk about one of the most underrated leadership skills. Communication. Not communication as in speaking well, not communication as in having the best answer all the time. And not communication as in being persuasive. But communication as in the discipline of understanding before trying to be understood. One of the biggest mistakes I think leaders make, myself included, is trying to be understood before they have done the work to understand. So I think it's a good place to start with the topic or the idea that communication is not just talking. I think a lot of people think communication means that you're able to say things clearly or explain your point or give clear directions or make people know what you mean. But leadership communication is a lot deeper than that. It's not just expression or being able to get a point across to a team, right? It's it's interpretation. A lot of communication is actually listening and it's reading the room and it's understanding what is being said, what is not being said, and the why behind it. So communication is is really just is not the transfer of words, it's the transfer of meaning. And there's this thing that I'm calling the leadership, the leader's temptation. So my you know, fellow entrepreneurs and leaders out there will understand this, and all this should resonate with you. That as a leader, you're often moving fast, you're often carrying context others just simply do not have. You're thinking, you know, two, three steps ahead. You're seeing problems before others can see them. So the temptation is the urge to jump straight into the act of correction, direction, advice, explanation, and getting into this solution mode loop. But when leaders move too quickly, especially when it comes to communication with the team, and the act to become understood is the first gate that we try to cross, we're often missing the human emotional reality that's right in front of us, which can lead to mistakes like interrupting too early or solving problems before diagnosing the root cause of why this occurred. It can look like assuming other people's intent, can look like having a correcting tone instead of this view of understanding concern. It can be explaining a decision before understanding the resistance to it, or treating confusion like incompetence, or disagreement like disloyalty. And so I believe a key leader who responds too quickly may be solving the wrong problem with confidence. And so this is something that I've been thinking a lot about lately, especially after my my interview with Eric Bergland, where we went deep into communication uh and leadership, uh, especially from the point of view of a leader and how leaders communicate. So, and then uh a really good friend and mentor of mine said to me, seek first to understand, and that's been sticking with me for the last couple of weeks, and I've been thinking a lot about it, and so they the whole concept of seeking to understand before seeking to be understood, uh, and why this principle matters is because people often open up when they feel hurt, and when you make the attempt and put in the effort to understand people on your team, that can lead to them lowering any defensiveness or resistance. It can create psychological safety, and it definitely adds to a healthy culture, but it also can give you a lot better information and help you separate the symptoms from the causes. And so I asked that mentor of mine, like, what does that sound like? What are some examples? And some of the examples he gave me is you know, just asking questions like, help me understand how you're seeing this, or walk me through your thought process, or what part of this feels difficult, or asking the question of here's what I'm hearing, is that correct? You know, and that leads into one of uh Chase Hughes' uh core tactics, which is um what he calls correcting the record, where you make a statement and it will prompt people to give you more information without directly asking for more information, just simply by making a statement that may or may not be true, or may only be a partial truth, that can lead to the other person saying, you know, yes, well, yes, but or yes and and then they'll give they can give up other information that they may not have otherwise if you just come in and in you know, boss mode, correction mode, uh, and didn't make that effort to understand the thinking behind some of these decisions. Now don't get confused that understanding is not agreeing, it's just simply the discipline of seeing clearly before you respond, which is something that I definitely as a leader can sometimes struggle with is the pause before diving in or responding to something when I think I may have the right answer or the right way of doing things, or know the way to correct something, that's all very well, but that becomes a culture of scolding and disciplining, and it's going to make people on your team stop sharing things with you and the reasoning behind you, especially if you are trying to correct things at the same time that you are trying to understand, and like that's another piece of it is the timing and sequencing of these things. That same mentor of mine told me that his recommendation is if you are going to make the effort to understand and under try and understand the thinking behind, for example, why someone made a decision that they made, and then they share that information with you. Don't make the fatal mistake of then, as soon as they do that, correct them, because then the person is going to associate, oh, you know, he or she is asking me for my thought process or to understand, which then is going to be directly followed by a correction. And so, you know, why does this matter in business? Well, businesses rarely break because of one bad conversation. They break because of repeated misalignment. That's that snowball effect that as entrepreneurs we want to avoid at all costs, because small misunderstandings can become missed expectations, can become resentment, can become rework, slow execution, low or diminishing trust, and culture drift. For example, like if a team member misses a deadline, a weak way of communication would be asking, why didn't you get this done? But I think the way of doing this that is a better leadership style, and the way of seeking to understand is asking, help me understand what got in the way. And the answers may reveal things that you didn't expect. Maybe it's an unclear alignment on priorities. Maybe it's capacity issues, maybe it's lack of training, maybe it's based in fear or scarcity, and you know, the fear of asking for help, or the fear of disappointing. Maybe it's a broken process. With clients, it can look like a client seems frustrated and weak communication defends the work product. But what if we tried to understand by saying asking, did expectations shift? Was the timeline for the deliverable unclear? Were you surprised by anything in here, or was there a gap in what we delivered and what you expected? Because most business problems are not execution problems. They're communication problems that eventually become execution problems. And I believe to build a great culture and to keep a great culture and to have your people on your team bought in, communication is going to be the biggest thing that you need to really nail. Because when people don't understand the why, they can result to executing mechanically. Or if they don't feel heard, they may comply, but they'll probably also disengage. When expectations are unclear, then accountability can become emotional. And so the cost of unclear communication rarely shows up as a single item because it shows up everywhere. And so that's why I I believe that listening can become your strategic advantage. It's not soft to listen. It's really a form of data gathering, pattern recognition. Listening is honestly risk management. It tells you where trust is strong and where it's fragile. And it can help you as a leader hear the issues before they become fires. And so, you know, if you're a founder, entrepreneur, CEO, executive out there, or a leader, you're often rewarded for early conviction. But as your company and your team and your culture grows, conviction without listening can become pretty dangerous. That's the scenarios where the leader sometimes becomes the bottleneck if every conversation is about proving what their perspective and why they are right. Because in my experience and from my observations, the best leaders are always curious, at least long enough to update their model of what is reality. And I think as a leader, having great communication can be what differentiates you as a leader from controlling or communicating by control, or communicating with clarity. You know, it's the difference between being a leader who says, here's what I need you to do, this is why I'm right. We've already talked about this, and just do it this way, to the clarity-based communication, which is more along the lines of like uh like here's the outcome we're trying to create, or and explaining here's why this matters, and or here's what success looks like. Because you know, control is gonna give you compliance and have a team of yes men, but clarity in your communication is what can create real ownership. And I'll tell you right now, firsthand, that it takes emotional discipline to communicate in this kind of way. Because when you are trying to, you know, when you're seeking to understand, it requires you to have a little more emotional restraint. You have to resist the urge to be defensive. For me, especially, it's resisting and fighting impatience. For some people, it's resisting ego or the need to be right, or just the need to resolve things immediately. Because sometimes the most powerful leadership move is just to pause, not to react right in that moment, not to correct right in that moment, but just to listen. Because if you listen long enough, the real issue will come to light. The quality of your communication as a leader can often be determined by what you can resist saying too soon. So, the next time you find yourself in this and you want to try a different approach, try a different loop. Try pausing, not rushing to respond, and then reflecting. Repeating try just repeating back what you hear, and then clarify if you need to. Ask the things that are missing or that you're unclear, so that you have the full picture, then align. That's where you can connect that conversation back to the goal, and then decide, once you've understood, the intent behind the actions. And in business, it can be a little different, right? But there's so many parallel settings that come up in business and in life. And this form of communication and leadership doesn't just apply to business, and we've probably all done it or seen it done outside of business. Because this also applies to marriage, to friendships, to family, because most conflict ends up escalating because both people are trying to be understood at the same time, and in those cases, no one is trying to understand first. So be the person who pauses and tries to understand the other side first. Because being understood is a basic human need. But it is a leadership skill that I don't think many of us are ever trained on.