Success Advice
This Overlooked Skill Drives Real Business Growth
It strengthens relationships, enhances decision-making, and fosters trust.

In every successful leader’s toolkit, one skill stands out above the rest: the ability to listen. While good leaders are known for making confident decisions, great leaders understand that those decisions are only as strong as the information they’re based on. And that information? It comes from truly listening to their teams, peers, and even critics.
The Core of Business Communication
There are four essential pillars of effective communication: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. While all four are important, listening is often the most undervalued, especially among leaders. According to listening expert Dr. Lyman K. Steil of the University of Minnesota, Americans spend more time listening than speaking, reading, or writing. Yet it’s the skill we most often take for granted.
Listening: The Underrated Soft Skill
Listening isn’t just a skill, it’s a soft skill that shows respect, empathy, and openness. When you listen intently, you signal that you value what someone else has to say. It builds connection and trust. Good listeners radiate warmth and maintain eye contact, making others feel heard and appreciated.
In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of a leader’s success can be attributed to listening. Imagine a manager who never hears out their team, or a teacher who dismisses student input. They may hold a position of authority, but they fall short as role models.
True communication is a two-way street. And listening, though more difficult than speaking, is the bridge that connects both ends.
Listening in the Classroom
Educators, in particular, must become active listeners. When students feel safe to share their thoughts, ideas, and questions, the classroom transforms into a dynamic space of knowledge exchange. One student’s insight can open the door for others to express their own perspectives.
When educators embrace these discussions, they empower students and elevate the learning experience for everyone. Listening becomes teaching.
The Link Between Listening and Leadership
Leadership and listening go hand in hand. To lead well, you must listen deeply and intentionally. Only by hearing all sides, team members, stakeholders, and customers, can leaders weigh the pros and cons of a decision and understand the full scope of a situation.
Listening helps reduce the risk of failure and increases the chances of successful outcomes. It shows your team that their input is valued, fosters collaboration, and builds unity. When people feel heard, they are more motivated, more loyal, and more invested in the mission.
Practical Listening Tools and Techniques
Listening may seem passive, but it’s an active and learned skill. Research shows we speak at around 120-180 words per minute, but we can comprehend up to 800 words per minute, leaving plenty of room for distraction. This gap, known as the “word lag,” is where listening often breaks down.
Here are several proven techniques to close that gap and improve your listening:
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Pay attention to content, not delivery. Don’t get distracted by how someone speaks; focus on what they’re saying.
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Look beyond words. Body language and tone often reveal more than spoken words.
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Avoid jumping to conclusions. Don’t let internal chatter (“inner noise”) drown out the speaker.
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Summarize. Briefly restate what’s been said to stay aligned and show you’re engaged.
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Relate to real life. Connect the conversation to your own experiences to improve retention.
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Paraphrase. Repeat the message in your own words to ensure understanding.
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Take notes. It shows commitment, supports recall, and can guide future action.
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Suspend judgment. Keep an open mind, especially when hearing something unfamiliar.
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Respect the speaker. Without respect, there can be no true listening or learning.
Listening Fuels Decision-Making
Making decisions isn’t easy. It involves gathering facts, weighing multiple perspectives, and ultimately taking a leap, sometimes without certainty. But when leaders are empathetic, patient, and open listeners, they access a broader range of insights and viewpoints.
This doesn’t just lead to smarter decisions, it creates stronger teams and healthier cultures.
That’s why great leaders talk less and listen more. They process information thoughtfully, consult widely, and remain humble enough to take ideas from every corner of the organisation, even from the most junior voices. After all, brilliant insights don’t always come from the top.
The Bottom Line
Listening is not a passive act; it’s one of the most powerful tools a leader can develop. It strengthens relationships, enhances decision-making, and fosters trust.
And just like clapping requires two hands, effective communication needs both a speaker and a listener. For leaders, being the listener first might just be the most important decision they ever make.
Scale Your Business
Tired of Wasting Money on the Wrong Marketers? Here’s How Smart Entrepreneurs Are Finally Hiring Right

If you’ve ever Googled how to hire a Facebook marketer or best TikTok marketing agency only to spend thousands on someone who couldn’t deliver…congrats, you’ve joined a very expensive club! For many entrepreneurs, hiring a digital marketer feels like more like visiting a casino and gambling with your runway, than it feels like securing a partner who’ll help build your business. Often, it feels like you’re betting on a stranger to grow the dream you’ve poured your savings into.
And way too often, you lose that bet.
You don’t need another list of the “Top 10 Agencies” with five-star testimonials and polished logos. You need to know which marketer can actually drive results for your business. Not in theory. In practice.
This is where entrepreneurs are learning to pivot. And it’s why a new platform called TruthMetric.com is turning heads across the startup world.
Why Most Startups Burn Through 3–6 Marketers Before Finding the Right One
Here’s the hard truth: most startups don’t fail because of their product, they fail because they can’t get sales or sell it fast enough. And in trying to fix that, founders usually go through five or six marketers, burning tens of thousands before finding someone who truly knows how to convert.
You build your product, get your website live, maybe even launch an ad campaign. But when you search for help and look up how to “hire a YouTube ads agency” or “top Facebook ad expert for Shopify”, you get hit with a sea of shiny portfolios, “ninja” titles, and endless promises.
Three months later, you’re still waiting on your first profitable campaign, and you’re most likely out tens of thousands, feeling utterly defeated…and maybe grinning with an affinity for that upcoming boxing class with a picture of that marketer’s fac……nevermind.
If this sounds like you, it’s time for what one entrepreneur called a strategic shift to scale smarter, not harder.
Introducing TruthMetric.com: The Transparent Marketplace for Hiring Marketers Who Deliver
TruthMetric.com isn’t just another freelancer platform or agency directory. It’s the first hiring solution where you can see three years of real, verified marketing performance before spending a dime.
That includes:
- Verified ad campaign performance
- Actual return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Industry-specific experience
- Platform specialties (Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Google Ads, and more)
Whether you’re looking for a Facebook ads expert, a TikTok marketer, or a YouTube growth strategist, TruthMetric.com lets you filter and compare based on what actually matters, results.
This level of clarity is something you won’t find on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. And it solves what many founders know too well as the New York Pizza Problem: where every marketer claims they’re “the best,” just like every pizzeria in Manhattan says they’re #1. Often without showing you results, you get sucked into this dream of collaboration, until the nightmare commences the moment you fork that first invoice payment. Hence the deception that leads to many business owners losing their hard earned savings and budget to launch their grand idea.
With TruthMetric, you finally get the data to decide for yourself, BEFORE you hire. Now if only New York Pizza shops had the same transparency then maybe you’d finally find the best pizza in New York, perhaps the perfect post work out after a boxing sesh? I think so!
Why Founders Are Shifting to Results-First Hiring
Most entrepreneurs think they need to do it all themselves, until they burn out or burn through their budget. That’s exactly why this founder had to drop the Superman complex and hire a marketing genius.
What makes TruthMetric so powerful is that it turns hiring into a confident move, not a hopeful one. You’re no longer guessing. You’re choosing from proven performers. You know what vertical they dominate. You know their past client performance. You see the monthly results from the campaigns they ran, and the outcomes they achieved.
It’s not just efficient. It’s empowering.
Scaling Quickly Requires Automation and Eliminating the Noise
Founders who scale quickly understand one thing: growth isn’t just about hustle, it’s about systems. TruthMetric is the system for finding great marketers at speed. No more DM’ing ten freelancers or interviewing agencies feeling like you are asking the world of them to just see some prior results. Instead you get to see the information you need to make an informed decision and plug into verified talent, all ready to perform.
This difference allows for you to match perfectly with the right talent quickly. If you’re building your business to run lean and fast, this convenience plugged in with automation can help you scale your small business right alongside your new marketing hires.
Why TruthMetric Is Also a Boon for Marketers, Not Just Founders
This isn’t just a win for founders, it is a gift for great marketers, too.
If you’re a freelance marketer who’s been quietly pulling 10x ROAS for clients while being passed over for flashy agencies, you now have a stage where your results speak louder than your brand.
TruthMetric is a true meritocracy. No fluff. No sales tricks. Just data.
If you’re tired of being overlooked and ready to stand out based on what you actually deliver, this is your home.
The Secret Weapon for Investors and M&A Operators
There’s another angle here that some of our readers might miss.
Investors, private equity firms, and M&A advisors should be drooling at the thought of having a proven talent pool they can plug and play and the ability to use TruthMetric to revive underperforming companies. Imagine acquiring a business or becoming an active investor, then dropping in a verified operator with a history of explosive growth in that niche.
It’s plug-and-play. Scale on demand.
That kind of insight has never been available before. You couldn’t do this on Upwork. You certainly can’t do it through a friend-of-a-friend referral.
And when it comes to attracting high-performing talent, here’s how to hire top talent and keep them around.
Let’s Really Drive This Home…
If you’ve wasted money on agencies or freelancers who couldn’t deliver, it’s not because you’re bad at hiring, it’s because the game was stacked against you. Trusting dreamy charismatic sales pitches over data was a doomed approach from the start.
TruthMetric levels the playing field by showing you what no other talent marketplace does and that’s proof.
Real marketers. Real results. Real growth.
It’s time to stop guessing and start hiring based on data.
Visit TruthMetric.com and make your next marketing hire the one that actually works.
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