As a university student, I lived in a large and legendary off-campus house with five other students, four of them happened to be women. Some of the most revealing and informing conversations of my life happened around the big, worn kitchen table at all hours of the day and night. It was there I first learned to SHUT UP AND LISTEN. I was a shy, small-town boy while my housemates were confident, big-city women.
They were highly-opinionated as they talked without reservation about everything under the sun – food, culture, politics, human nature, navigating college, relationships, philosophy, you name it. This is where my eyes were opened wide to the world and the different opinions of how it worked. This was my real education!
That kitchen table with our names, and those of the students who lived here before us, carved into it, became a classroom for me. The thought-provoking and wide-ranging perspectives that were not available in the small towns of my youth were there for the taking – the wisdom of lived experience, the foolishness of youth and everything in between was wrapped up for me in a masterclass of life.
All I had to do was SHUT UP AND LISTEN.
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After grad school I moved to Chicago and began my corporate career as a consultant specializing in employee attitude research and organizational culture assessment. Even though I had the academic credentials to do the work I really felt like an outsider. I was the small-town guy with working-class roots working with more sophisticated people with middle and upper-class backgrounds.
In those days one succeeded in the corporate world, not by being an authentic, unique individual, but by “fitting in.” And for me to fit in, I had to learn a lot and learn it fast. In the pre-internet era, the most efficient and effective method to acquire the knowledge I needed to survive in the corporate environment was to SHUT UP AND LISTEN.
While my silence was likely perceived as shyness or aloofness or even not being that bright, behind my sealed lips my brain was rapidly processing how my colleagues and clients in the corporate world thought, what they valued, what language they used, their hobbies, where they shopped, what they read and on and on.
This process was incredibly valuable because it deepened my understanding and broadened my perspective of a world I had never been exposed to. It allowed me to more easily navigate the corridors and boardrooms of the corporate world, to succeed in a realm that would typically not be open to me.
It was through this experience I came to realize the world could be my classroom, that all of the knowledge I would need to lead a fulfilling and successful life was right there in front of me. For free! All I had to do was SHUT UP AND LISTEN.
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When I opened my first guitar repair shop in 1990 in Chicago, I knew one thing my competition did not know. Guitar players not only LOVE their guitars, they LOVE to TALK about them. A lot! I had taken my guitars to many Chicago luthiers and was shocked they did not want to listen to me talk about my guitar. This seemed rather odd because I was trusting them with something I love…….
The protocol at Bob’s Guitar Service was to greet the client, open the guitar case, then ask the customer to tell you about this guitar. The effects of asking clients to talk were nothing short of amazing –
- It created an instant trust and rapport - a fantastic customer service foundation
- They revealed what they thought the problem was – great intel for my diagnosis
- They revealed how much or how little they valued the guitar – an indicator of the level of service and cost they would be comfortable with
- They talked about their other guitars and/or their friends’ guitars – pathways to follow-up business
- Common friction points like cost, approach to the work, when the repair would be finished and trust, all disappeared
The simple tool of SHUT UP AND LISTEN paid immediate business dividends right before my eyes. Over 30 years later, Bob’s Guitar Service is still remembered fondly not just for the quality of the work, but for the bond that was created by the conversations.
One conversation stays with me to this day –
A fellow laid a cheap, beat-up case on the bench. Inside was a well-worn, inexpensive, unplayable guitar worth literally nothing. The repair would be several hundred dollars and the instrument would still be worthless. As I opened my mouth to relay this to the owner, reflex kicked in and what came out was “So, tell me about this guitar.”
The fellow replied “We just buried my mom this morning and she bought me this, my first guitar.” In a heartbeat that guitar worth nothing was transformed into a priceless memory and my job became one of providing comfort, respect and preservation. Can you imagine how this fellow would have felt had I not SHUT UP AND LISTENED?
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Being in a band of musicians is like being in a very exclusive, select club with its own unique culture, language, humor, rituals, pecking order, priorities and bonding agents. Succeeding in this environment requires navigating through minefields of the interpersonal dynamics of highly creative and passionate people, in an unforgiving business, often in the cramped quarters of tour buses, dressing rooms and recording studios.
If you are good at this navigation, you can enjoy the most awesome of life experiences – being IN the band. As far back as I can remember, being in the band was all I’ve ever wanted out of life.
As a youth, like many musicians, I played in cover bands. It was fairly easy to navigate the dynamics as I was usually the leader. But once I became a fulltime musician playing original music, I was joining bands that other people led, where the stakes were much higher and the navigation was much more complex.
Thank goodness I had the skill of being able to SHUT UP AND LISTEN! It was responsible in part for my 22-year career as a professional musician – touring the world, meeting my heroes, playing a thousand gigs on the big stages and recording on over 100 albums.