Less Prescribing. More Noticing.

Dear reader, I’ve been wondering whether some of us have become a little too good at giving answers.

I include myself in that. In fact, I may be particularly guilty of it. I’ve spent much of my working life in roles where people quite reasonably expected me to know things. An issue appears, somebody explains the circumstances, and my mind instinctively starts looking for the answer. What’s really happening here? What are the options? What should we do? How do we fix it? There are worse instincts to have, and over the years that way of thinking has served me pretty well.

But I’m beginning to wonder whether being helpful and having an answer are always the same thing. The older I get, the less convinced I am. I’ve noticed something in conversations recently. Someone will tell me about a problem, and while they’re still speaking I can feel my mind beginning to assemble a response. Perhaps you’ve done it too. We listen to the first half of someone’s sentence while quietly preparing the first half of our answer. We haven’t stopped listening exactly, but we’re no longer completely present either. We’ve moved from hearing the person to solving the problem.

Sometimes that’s precisely what’s required. If someone asks me a technical question and I know the answer, it would be rather irritating if I simply stared thoughtfully at them and asked how the question made them feel. But people aren’t always asking technical questions. Sometimes the problem they bring into the room isn’t really the problem at all.

I’ve seen this in business countless times. A conversation begins with revenue, structure, strategy, succession or a difficult employee, and twenty minutes later we’re talking about something quite different. An owner is exhausted but frightened to admit it. A leader knows something needs to change but can’t quite bring themselves to say what. Someone has built the thing they thought they wanted and quietly discovered they don’t want to live inside it anymore. The spreadsheet wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t the whole conversation. You only discover that if you stay curious for long enough. That’s something I’m trying to learn: to prescribe a little less and notice a little more.

Notice the pause before somebody answers. Notice when their energy changes. Notice the subject they return to for the third time even though they insist it isn’t important. Notice the thing they joke about because saying it seriously would feel too vulnerable. Notice when the person asking for advice may actually be asking for permission. Notice when somebody already knows the answer and simply needs somewhere safe enough to say it aloud. Those moments are easy to miss if you’re in a hurry to be useful.

I wonder how often we do the same thing outside work? Someone we love tells us they’re struggling and we immediately offer a solution - men especially do this all the time. A friend shares something difficult and we tell them what we’d do. Our spouse describes their day and, before they’ve finished, we’ve identified three entirely reasonable ways the situation could have been handled differently. We mean well. Most prescribing begins with good intentions. But sometimes the person sitting opposite us doesn’t need the problem solved. They need to know we’ve noticed them.

I’m learning this in my relationship with Maria too. We talk a lot, and one of the things I treasure about our relationship is the freedom we have to talk about anything. But loving someone doesn’t automatically make you a good listener. Sometimes love makes you want to fix things even quicker because you don’t like seeing someone you care about carrying something difficult.

I’m discovering that there are moments when the most loving response isn’t, “Here’s what I think you should do.” It’s simply, “Tell me more.” That’s a surprisingly powerful sentence. ‘Tell me more’. It communicates that I’m not trying to hurry you toward my conclusion. I’m interested enough to stay with yours.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve become increasingly interested in good questions. Not clever questions designed to demonstrate how perceptive the person asking them is, but honest questions that create room. What are you really worried about? What would you do if you weren’t afraid of disappointing anyone? When did this stop feeling right? What are you holding onto that you already know you need to release? What would enough look like? Where do you sense God in all of this?

And then comes the difficult part. Waiting for the answer. Silence used to make me so uncomfortable. I hated silence. I suspect it does most of us. We rush to fill it because we assume nothing is happening. I’m beginning to think silence may be one of the busiest parts of a good conversation. It’s often where somebody moves beyond the answer they’ve rehearsed and discovers the one they actually believe. There is humility required in that kind of listening because it means accepting that I may not be the person with the answer. In fact, there may not be an answer yet.

Faith has complicated this for me in a good way. Christians can sometimes be particularly quick to prescribe. We have Scripture, experience, convictions and a genuine desire to encourage one another, all of which are good things. But even truth can be handled without tenderness. Sometimes we reach for an explanation when what somebody needs first is our presence. We tell them what God is doing in their life when perhaps we should be humble enough to admit that we don’t know. I’ve become much more comfortable saying that. I don’t know. I don’t know why that happened. I don’t know why the door closed. I don’t know why the prayer hasn’t been answered the way you hoped. I don’t know what God is doing with that particular thread. But I can sit here with you while you hold it. Perhaps that’s one of the quieter forms of ministry. Not explaining God to somebody, but being willing to remain beside them while they look for Him.

Jesus, interestingly, asked an extraordinary number of questions. Questions He presumably didn’t need the information from. “What do you want me to do for you?” “Who do you say I am?” “Do you want to get well?” There is something striking about that. The questions created space for people to name what was happening inside them. I’m trying to learn from that. Not every conversation needs to end with my wisdom neatly placed on the table. Sometimes the better outcome is that the other person leaves having heard something within themselves more clearly.

And this is where I think noticing becomes more than a communication technique. It becomes a way of seeing people. When we notice someone, we resist the temptation to reduce them to the problem they’ve brought us. They’re not a struggling business owner. They’re not a difficult employee. They’re not the friend going through a divorce, the person who lost their job, the leader who’s burned out, or the Christian having doubts. They’re a human being carrying a story we only partly understand. There’s a tapestry behind them that we cannot see.

Perhaps that’s why these first few letters seem to keep finding their way back to the same place. A chair. A little time. Enough quiet. Someone willing to stay.

The Front Porch is beginning to teach me what I hope it might eventually offer others. I don’t want this to become somewhere I dispense answers from a comfortable chair while everybody else takes notes. There are plenty of places on the internet for that. I’d rather this be somewhere we learn to notice together.

I can share what I’m learning. You can decide what, if anything, belongs in your own journey. Sometimes I’ll have something practical to offer. Sometimes you may disagree with me entirely. Sometimes perhaps a sentence will simply cause you to stop for a moment and think about something differently. That would be enough.

Because perhaps the people who have shaped us most deeply weren’t always the ones who gave us the best answers. They were the ones who paid attention. The teacher who saw something. The mentor who asked the uncomfortable question. The friend who noticed we weren’t quite ourselves. The person who remembered what we’d said months earlier. The one who stayed when the conversation became inconvenient. I’d like to become more like that.

Less hurried to demonstrate what I know. Less anxious to resolve every tension. Less interested in being the smartest person in the conversation. More curious. More attentive. More comfortable with silence. More willing to ask another question. More aware that God may already be doing something in the person sitting opposite me that doesn’t require my interference.

Less prescribing. More noticing.

I suspect there’s a lifetime of learning in those four words.

Until next time,

— Kyan

P.S. — Think about someone who really listened to you at an important point in your life. What did they do that made you feel heard? If someone comes to mind, perhaps tell them. And if you’d like to tell me about them too, hit reply. I’d love to hear their story.