Episode Details
Back to EpisodesHow to Know a Person | Leadership, Listening, and Seeing People in Busy Times
Description
How to Know a Person: Leadership, Listening, and Seeing People in Busy Times
The fastest way to lose a team is not always a bad plan. It is treating people like tasks while chasing the next deadline.
Recording from a New York City hotel room during a packed stretch of travel, graduate-school work, and deliverables, Buzz reflects on a leadership question that would not let go: Do the people around us feel genuinely seen—or simply managed?
Drawing on David Brooks’s How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, this episode explores why attention, curiosity, active listening, and emotional intelligence are practical leadership skills—not “soft” extras.
Buzz shares two lessons from his Air Force career: one involving an Airman whose apparent disengagement masked a medical concern, and another in which a junior officer noticed stress that Buzz himself had not recognized. The point is not to lower standards or avoid hard conversations. It is to get curious before getting certain.
Using Brooks’s “illuminator versus diminisher” lens, this episode offers a simple leadership check: After a conversation with you, do people feel clearer, more capable, and more seen—or smaller, rushed, and unheard?
You will also leave with three coaching questions to help you slow down, stay present, and lead people—not just manage tasks.
Subscribe to The Leadership Buzz for practical leadership reflection, executive-coaching insights, and conversations that help leaders work hard, tell the truth, and lead with greater intention.
The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact.
If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team.
Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources.
Work hard. Tell the truth.