(6) ::Listening & Ethics::

            I generally consider myself to be an easy-going person.  I think that I communicate in a more unassertive way more often than not.  The only exception to this is when I’m working with people and important things just aren’t getting done.  Then I would more likely become a bit more assertive and to the point, but I wouldn’t naturally be the “take charge” kind of person unless no one else is stepping up. 

            When I took the “Listening self-evaluation”, I ended up with a score of 75.  This is the side of leadership that comes naturally for me.  I would much rather sit and listen to someone attentively than have someone else have to listen to me.  The one thing that I scored the lowest on was listening and paying close attention even when the subject is boring or too complicated for me to understand.  It’s so easy just to tune out when that happens, but it’s still important to be there for people and actually hear what they are saying.

            A few years ago,  I was the co-leader of a music ministry team to Hong Kong, and we were supposed to lead worship at a local church for the second time, but we didn’t have enough songs.  We had to come up with new songs and lead the congregation in worship.  There was a guitarist on my team named Lucy who had a beautiful voice, but was only a designated guitarist because we had three other female vocalists who were less experienced, but had lots of potential.  The dilemma was: Do we just let Lucy lead worship because we know she can do a great job?  Or do we give the other three girls a chance even though they are less experienced and might not produce as good of results?  Using care-based thinking, I eventually decided to let all four of the girls work together and have Lucy play the guitar to accompany the other three girls, because they needed a chance to grow, learn, and maybe improve upon their skills, whereas Lucy would have done a really nice job, but it wouldn’t be a new growing experience for her.  To me, the results were not as important as the people and the learning experience.