The Glib Continuum

There's a post on a blog I read fairly often, which talks around the difference between people who have really good ideas but can't articulate them, and people who have nothing to say but always win the argument because they are good at talking.

How to become more articulate with your good ideas is one of the themes of the post. But how leaders (of businesses, whatever - and this would apply to churches too) listen is another important part of it. If you're a leader of any kind of group anywhere you'll do yourself and everyone else a favour if you distinguish between people who are good at talking and people who have good ideas. They aren't always the same.  Go read: Creating Passionate Users: When only the glib win, we all lose.

Comments

[cheryl]

Coming at this from the other side as it were a friend recommended to me a book called 'Time to think' which argues that the quality of our listening plays a major role in determining the quality of other people's thinking so that if we listen well ( and the book discusses how to do this) then we help people generate their best ideas. I found it really exciting and very relevant to church life though it was written for a business context by someone from a Quaker background called Nancy Kline. We're going to be discussing it in deanery chapter next month.

[Tim]

Not quite the same, but a similar idea anyway:

'From the lying moon to the movement of stars,
Everyone's wondering who they are.
And those who know don't have the words to tell,
aand those with the words don't know too well'.

- Bruce Cockburn, 'Burden of the Angel/Beast'.

[Simon Barrow]

Thanks for this. Useful thoughts on a very important subject - especially in a culture which gives technological and cultural ('newsworthy') priority to the immediate and the accessible, therefore disadvantaging more 'difficult' ideas and possibilities, or those who need time to find a voice. Nick Adams at Edinburgh is one of the few theologians who has a particular interest in what is involved in "learning how to argue well", and that's the backdrop to this on Job's argument with God.