The Way Forward is Through

“All he ever does is listen — just listen. He never actually takes action,” one staff member says with frustration.

“And her — she’s like a bull in a china shop,” adds another. “She barrels ahead and gets things done, but never considers the impact on the people around her.”

A listener who listens but doesn’t lead.

A leader who leads but doesn’t listen.

Both leave us stranded.

Aristotle believed that virtue lies in the middle of two extremes, which he described as vices. On one end is deficiency — too little of something — and on the other is excess — too much. These extremes offer false choices: either all of this or none of that. No nuance. No middle path. The results are almost always negative, for ourselves and for others.

This is especially true for leaders, who are expected to operate from a wise, measured, and thoughtful place. Leadership assumes a commitment to stable and constructive engagement, rather than being whipped to and fro by the unwieldy and untamed inner shadows with which we all wrestle. As I’ve written elsewhere, when leaders fail to address their internal disarray — and the contradictions that often teem within — they inevitably project that disarray onto others. It is rare for someone to remain internally destabilized for long without destabilizing everything around them. Internal chaos wreaks havoc on the external world.

We need a solution — but even then, we may be tempted by extremes. Here’s the truth: leaders cannot afford to get lost in their inner world. That kind of navel-gazing leads to the neglect of the people and commitments leaders are meant to steward. At the same time, being overly focused on external outcomes while ignoring one’s inner life is not noble self-denial — it’s avoidance masquerading as virtue.

Responsibility calls us to the radical middle — radical because it is neither popular nor easy. This vocation of middleness should not be mistaken for a lukewarm or unprincipled disposition. Rather, it is a vigilant and attentive way of being in the world, one that tracks our tendencies to become either unboundaried or walled off.

The extremes — and their consequences — become especially clear when we examine the world of values: the tightly held beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, that animate our decisions and interactions with others.

Too Little or Too Much

Take courage, for example.

Too little courage results in cowardice — a failure to confront problems within our spheres of control or influence because we’ve been overcome by fear: fear of losing power, status, or resources. It’s an unwillingness to do the right thing when it matters most. Like political leaders in the United States who avoid hard conversations with their constituents, or C-suite executives who fail to address problematic behavior in their own ranks because they fear backlash.

Too much courage leads to recklessness and hubris, where we don’t adequately assess risks and throw caution to the wind — almost always with negative consequences. It’s like cutting the federal workforce without understanding their essential roles, only to realize they must be rehired. Or worse: using someone’s identity as justification for harm, treating everyday people as representatives of governments or regimes you oppose. Courage without wisdom can be deadly.

Let’s turn to another essential — yet often misunderstood and misused — value: empathy.

Too little empathy creates callousness — a lack of awareness or concern for others’ experiences and suffering. This callousness is often selective, shaped by bias and othering. It’s the kind of thinking that permits hoarding wealth, dismissing pain, or ignoring systemic harm. It’s what allows some doctors to minimize patient pain based on perceptions of their race, gender, or class.

As a conflict mediator, I see this all the time: people showing empathy only for “their side” — as if empathy were a scarce resource to ration.

Too much empathy creates emotional enmeshment, where we over-identify with others and fail to maintain boundaries or critical distance. It can erode accountability — we excuse poor behavior in ourselves or others. I supported a CEO once who, fearful of being labeled punitive, failed to remove a leader known for callous leadership and poor interpersonal skills. The hard-won credibility they had built with staff eroded quickly due to their conflict avoidance and failure to act decisively. Their empathy for the leader they refused to remove appeared to be at odds with the empathy they claimed to hold for the staff suffering under that leader’s harsh hand.

Another pattern I’ve observed — in myself and others — is the oscillation between under-owning and over-owning responsibility for harm. Under-owning is paradoxical: we do harm, deny it, and focus solely on how others have harmed us. This rests on the illusion of perpetual innocence.

Over-owning is equally problematic. It inflates our own power while diminishing others’ agency. At first glance, it may seem noble to take full responsibility for a relational dynamic, but doing so can infantilize others and obscure their role.

I once read that in most conflicts, everyone is at least 10% right and at least 10% wrong. That means we all bear some responsibility. Once again, this is the radical middle.

This deficiency–excess dilemma is everywhere. It stems from our tendency toward binary thinking — “my survival or yours,” “my peace or yours,” “my life or yours.” While seductive, these binaries are not life-giving. They emerge from our lower instincts, not our higher minds. They reflect scarcity, not abundance. And they wreak havoc in our relationships, organizations, and society. This dynamic comes into sharper focus as we examine the relationship between listening and leading.

On Listening

Leaders in every sector face these tendencies toward deficiency and excess daily as they navigate what can feel like competing values. And this fundamental dynamic shows up in the listening lives of leaders — or the lack thereof.

Leadership begins, but does not end, with listening. On one end of the continuum is too little listening; on the other, too much. Leaders who are unable to right-size their listening cause tremendous damage, thwarting trust and undermining effectiveness in either direction.

In some respects, both of these statements are true: we lead when we listen, and we listen when we lead. What is there for us to do as leaders if we don’t begin with listening? Listening helps us unearth strengths, challenges, and potential solutions related to the communities we serve. Not listening carefully and fully results in uninformed and non-responsive actions that too easily perpetuate problems. Listening is fundamentally a posture of humility, of sharing power. We don’t know what we don’t know, and so we listen.

Yet we must also act on what we have heard so that the people we serve can see their experiences reflected in the steps we take toward change. Otherwise, they become, at best, hopeless — and at worst, resentful of having shared their experiences only to be met by unattuned leaders content with platitudes. Think of how maddening it feels to hear “my thoughts and prayers are with you” from elected officials following yet another act of gun violence in a country that treats the Second Amendment as more sacred than life itself.

Listening is about both empathy and decisiveness — how we understand others and leave them feeling understood, and how we act on what we hear to improve conditions — or fail to do either.

Those two things need each other. It’s entirely possible to be empathic but not decisive, and decisive but not empathic. Yet we know that pulling those two values apart distorts each. Empathy without action can feel hollow; decisiveness without empathy can feel top-down and out of touch. Both are necessary.

Leadership and listening need each other to be true to themselves. So, once again, picture a continuum. On one end: not enough. On the other: way too much. And somewhere in the middle? That’s where the magic lives.

• Too Little Listening

I went to dinner with a younger leader recently. They told me a truly concerning story. In a leadership meeting with senior leaders, the CEO implied they had reached a stage in their career where listening was no longer necessary. They had learned all they needed to learn and believed it was time for decisive action.

The younger leader was taken aback. Unsure how to respond, they nodded, though their face surely registered disbelief. But given that the CEO was no longer committed to listening, they were likely oblivious to the impact of their words — and the younger leader was unlikely to push further. True listening is a full-bodied exercise. It requires attunement to how others are being impacted by our decisions, actions, or inaction.

Too little listening (and not enough humility) leads to disappointment.

I worked with one organization where a leader held “listening sessions” with staff to address concerns. They told me staff were angered, not reassured. I asked them to describe the format. They said the sessions began with a lengthy presentation of leadership’s actions to date — to clarify misperceptions.

I explained that listening sessions, by definition, should center the voices of staff, not leadership. The misalignment between the session’s name and its structure created unmet expectations. No wonder staff were dissatisfied. The format felt like defensive posturing.

The leader asked for a fix. I suggested a simple format using a Circle process, with smaller groups instead of town halls. Each session would open with a question, and each participant would share sequentially. The leader would speak last — only to reflect back and synthesize what they heard, not to correct perceived misinformation.

The purpose, I explained, was not passive absorption but active reflection — to demonstrate listening. The goal was twofold: to better understand and to make staff feel understood.