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Lesson 6 from ten years in business
Some of the best business conversations I have ever had involved strong opinions on both sides.
Not arguments exactly, although a few of them got close. More like two people who had both thought carefully about something and arrived at genuinely different conclusions, and were willing to sit in that discomfort long enough to actually hear each other out.
Those conversations certainly had an impact on how I think over ten years of business.
The echo chamber problem
It is very easy, in business, to gradually surround yourself with people who think the same way you do.
It happens naturally and without much intention.
You connect with people who share your values, your approach, your general worldview. You follow people online whose perspectives feel familiar and affirming. You build a network that reflects your own thinking back at you, and it feels comfortable, because it is.
The problem is that comfortable is not always useful.
When everyone around you broadly agrees, your thinking does not get tested.
Your assumptions go unchallenged. Your blind spots stay blind and you can develop a level of confidence in your own perspective that is not entirely earned, because it has never really been pushed.
Different perspectives sharpen thinking. Disagreement, handled well, makes you better.
What listening actually means
I want to be specific about this, because I think listening is one of those things that people assume they are doing when they are often doing something else entirely.
Listening is not waiting for your turn to speak. It is not scanning what someone is saying for the parts you disagree with so you can prepare your counter. It is not nodding along while quietly remaining entirely unconvinced and unchanged.
Real listening means being genuinely open to the possibility that you do not have the full picture. That the other person might know something you do not and that their perspective, even if it is different from yours, contains something worth considering.
That is a harder thing than it sounds, especially when you are confident in your position, or when the stakes feel high, or when the person disagreeing with you is doing so in a way that does not feel entirely respectful.
But the willingness to listen properly, even in those conditions, is one of the things that separates good business relationships from great ones.
Listening is not agreeing
This is the part that I think trips people up most.
You do not have to change your mind to have listened properly. You do not have to adopt someone else's position, validate every point they made, or pretend to be convinced when you are not.
You can hear someone out fully, consider their perspective genuinely, and still arrive at a different conclusion.
That is not a failure of listening, it’s what good listening actually looks like in practice.
What it does require is that your conclusion is based on having actually engaged with what they said, rather than having dismissed it before they finished saying it.
There is a significant difference between considered disagreement and reactive dismissal. And the people on the other side of a conversation can almost always tell which one they are getting.
What this means for marketing
In marketing, this lesson shows up in a very specific way.
Your ideal clients will tell you what they think, what they need, and what is not working for them, if you create space for them to do so and then actually listen to what comes back.
Feedback on content, responses to emails, the questions people ask before they buy, the reasons people give when they do not, all of this is your ideal client talking to you. And the temptation is to filter it through what you want to hear rather than what is actually being said.
Listening to your ideal clients, even when what they are telling you is inconvenient or requires you to rethink something, is one of the most valuable things you can do for your marketing.
How to actually do it
1. Make space for disagreement in your business relationships.
If everyone around you always agrees, that is a signal worth paying attention to. Actively seek out people who will push back, challenge your thinking, and tell you when they see something differently. Then listen to what they say.
2. Practice the pause before you respond.
When someone says something you disagree with, resist the urge to respond immediately. Take a moment. Make sure you have actually heard what they said, not just the version of it that your disagreement already started building a response to.
3. Ask clarifying questions before you counter.
Before you push back on a perspective, make sure you understand it fully. Ask questions. Confirm you have heard correctly. This slows the conversation down in a way that almost always improves it, and it signals to the other person that you are genuinely engaging rather than just waiting to disagree.
4. Create genuine feedback loops in your marketing.
Ask your ideal clients what they think. Make it easy for them to tell you when something is not working. Read the responses you get to your content with genuine openness rather than looking for confirmation. The businesses that listen to their audiences consistently produce better marketing over time.
Your action this week
Think about a conversation you have been avoiding because you know the other person sees things differently and you are not sure you want to hear it.
Have it this week. Go in with the intention of listening properly rather than defending your position. You do not have to agree with what you hear. But you might learn something that changes how you approach the situation, and that alone is worth the discomfort.
If your marketing has not been getting the response you hoped for, sometimes the most useful thing is an honest outside perspective. I will tell you what I actually see, not just what you want to hear, and we can build something better from there. Get in touch here.
This is part of a series expanding on the lessons from ten years of running Starfish.
Lesson 1: Do what you say you will
Lesson 2: Do not put a lit pipe in your pocket
Lesson 3: Empathy can be learned
Lesson 4: Different is not evil
Lesson 5: Curiosity beats assumption
Next up: Lesson 7, Thinking differently is the point.
FAQs about listening even if you don’t agree
Why is it so hard to listen to opinions we disagree with in business?
A lot of it comes down to identity. When we have invested time, energy, and confidence in a particular way of doing things, a challenge to that approach can feel like a challenge to our competence or judgment.
The instinct is to defend rather than consider. In business, this is compounded by the fact that decisions often have real consequences, which raises the emotional stakes of being wrong.
The shift that helps most is separating the idea from the person holding it. You can engage with a perspective on its merits without it being a referendum on your abilities.
How do you build a business network that challenges your thinking rather than just affirming it?
Deliberately and with some intention.
Most networks form naturally around similarity, shared industry, shared values, shared ways of working. That foundation is fine, but it helps to actively seek out people who bring different experiences, different disciplines, and different perspectives.
Industry groups outside your own sector, mentors who have built businesses differently than you have, and peers who are willing to have honest conversations rather than just supportive ones, all contribute to a network that sharpens thinking rather than just reflecting it back.
How can listening to your audience improve your marketing results?
Your audience is constantly signalling what they need, what is not landing, and what would make them more likely to engage or buy.
The businesses that pay close attention to those signals, through feedback, through the questions people ask, through what content gets engagement and what does not, consistently produce more relevant and effective marketing than those who rely on assumptions.
Listening does not mean acting on every piece of feedback uncritically, but it does mean treating your audience as the authority on their own experience, and building your marketing around what you actually hear rather than what you assumed you would.
