In the age of coronavirus, with our stress levels skyrocketing and a decreased ability to filter strong emotions before they burst forth, I am reminded over and over again about one of my favorite TV characters, Leslie Knope (played brilliantly by Amy Poehler) from the tv show Parks and Recreation. Leslie Knope is the earnest, sometime clueless, ambitious, but ever-faithful public servant, who remarks at an open town meeting where she is being verbally pummeled by outraged townspeople:
“What I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.”
Leslie Knope’s ability to re-frame is remarkable. And to do it under pressure no less! But Leslie Knope wasn’t working in a pandemic and I often wonder how she would respond as a leader to the situation we are facing. I’ve experienced a lot of people caring loudly at me at various points in my career: as a college coach, an umpire (lots of caring loudly going on there), as our college’s chief student conduct officer, our Title IX Coordinator, and now as our Vice President for Student Affairs. Many of my colleagues across campus share their own stories about what it feels like to field the vociferous complaints of colleagues, students, parents, alumni, townspeople, and others.
So how can we best respond to “people caring loudly?” A normal, human response to being yelled at is to defend oneself against the onslaught. It’s also normal to experience anger, sometimes rivalling that of the person expressing their outrage. Acknowledging that these are normal responses, effective leaders need to accept those feelings, but also resist the pull for an immediate – yet likely unproductive – response, and think about what they can do instead.
How about “listening quietly” as the response to “caring loudly?”
Listening quietly is not easy. It requires (in order):
- the commitment to doing so
- the ability to see the person expressing their displeasure as a human
- the discipline to resist an impulse to engage with them point-by-point
In short, listening quietly means you have provided the person caring loudly with the space to do so. It also means you’ve given yourself room to avoid falling into the trap of trying to either “outcare” the other person or to argue back with more volume.
Listening quietly is more challenging than exercising your routine listening skills (which we all need to work on); listening quietly when every fiber of your being compels you to yell back and defend yourself isn’t a skill that can be developed overnight. And there are times when the attack is vicious and so disrespectful that NOT responding forcefully is not only difficult but not advised. Those are the times when we need to be able to stop the conversation, clearly state that we refuse to be treated in that manner, and will engage with the other person when they are ready and willing to do so with respect.
But for the many other times where angry voices are truly people caring loudly (about a person they love or an important issue), we have a responsibility as leaders to understand what the message behind the emotion is. We can start by doing what Leslie Knope was able to do so skillfully and use language to re-frame the behavior — and then we can commit to listening quietly.