The ability to really listen to others is much more than just the gathering of information

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few months back, I began corresponding on a semi-monthly basis with one of my closest law school friends, whom I haven’t seen in close to fifty years. In one of his first missives, he made an important observation based on his career at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone: Every one of the most brilliant people he met — the one-in-a-thousand minds — was a superb listener.

Because each of them knew that no matter how smart or knowledgeable a person is, no one knows everything, and one can always gain from the knowledge and perspectives of others. As just one example: One of the keys to the George Washington’s success as a general in the Revolutionary War was his openness to the suggestions of subordinates.

Prior to the second battle of Trenton, writes David Hackett Fischer in Washington’s Crossing, “The discussion was freewheeling and its tone suggested that Washington wanted it that way. The suggestion to disengage from the British at Trenton and outflank them on the way to Princeton came from a subordinate officer and was adopted by Washington.” By contrast, the British general Cornwallis imposed his plan for attacking Trenton “from the top down against the judgment of able inferiors.”

BUT THE ABILITY to really listen to others is much more than just the gathering of information. It is the key to building relationships and to effective leadership. When we really listen to another, we affirm their importance to us, and that what they are thinking or feeling is important to us because they are important.

Any spouse who has ever interjected a comment or headed off in another direction while his or her spouse is relating a story — and who hasn’t — knows what I’m talking about. That interjection will too often be experienced as a lack of interest in what is being said and bring the conversation to a close.

Part of the problem is that too often we are not so much listening and trying to absorb what the other is trying to communicate as we are waiting for our turn to speak. And that is felt.

So, too, when we are only half listening. I’m embarrassed to think about all the times that one of my children has called while I’m working at the computer, and they have asked me in the middle of the conversation whether I’m on the computer. Sometimes they even point out that they can hear the click-click of my typing. Again, the message conveyed is one of a lack of interest, or at the very least of other priorities.

I’M CURRENTLY WORKING on a biography of Rabbi Moshe Hauer z”l, the late executive vice-president of the OU. In almost every interview and in the written hespedim, his extraordinary attentiveness is mentioned. In private meetings, he invariably devoted part of the conversation to finding out what was new with the person with whom he was speaking and his or her family. The message was that the employee was important to him as a person as well as someone with a task in the organization.

He once told a son who had complained that he seemed distracted that if that ever occurred again, he should tell him immediately that he did not seem fully present.

When in a meeting he and someone else began to speak at the same time, he would stop and tell the other person, “You go first. I want to hear what you have to say.”

Most highly intelligent people have a need to let others know how smart they are, and much of what they have to say is designed to make that point. All those who spoke or wrote about Rabbi Hauer after his passing remarked upon the fact that he felt no need to do so or to speak at all. And as a consequence, when he did speak, everyone present paid great attention, because they knew that what he had to say was germane to the matter at hand and reflected the careful attention he had been paying to everything that was said. Accordingly, he often spoke last, summarizing the various opinions expressed, with his own view of the matter at hand often carrying the day.

His lack of need to speak was a reflection of his anivus. It was almost impossible to get him to speak of himself, and certainly of his accomplishments. And that modesty — the lack of focus on himself, as opposed to the needs of the klal or of the countless individuals to whom he devoted himself in his 26 years as communal rav — drew others to him.

No quality attracts others more than anivus. For they know the anav does not view himself in competition with anyone else. The only standards that matter to him are those he sets for himself, and thus he does not compare himself to anyone else or look down on those of lesser attainments. And as a consequence, others are comfortable in his presence and eager to work together with him.

Not by accident was the greatest leader the world has ever known described by HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself as anav mikol adam. And listening to others — truly listening — is a big part of that.

Everybody Makes Mistakes

Less than three years ago, I published a feature in these pages on James Fishback (“Let’s Debate That,” Issue 968), a former star high school debater and debate coach, who had created new formats for high school debate to compete with the staid National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA).

Fishback came to my attention when he wrote a number of articles in the Free Press accusing the NSDA of having become a woke institution in which only certain left-wing arguments could hold sway (“At High School Debate, Debate Is No Longer Allowed.”) Besides Fishback having the imprimatur of the Free Press, I also spoke to a law school classmate, Robert Litan, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institute and one of the country’s leading anti-trust litigators, and like myself a former high school debater. Litan has written a book on how to base the American educational system on a debate centered curriculum, and he told me that he had judged tournaments based on Fishback’s formats.

I spoke to Fishback at length. In that conversation, he emphasized his background as one of only two white students in his high school class; and after he dropped out of college to start a hedge fund, he coached an all-black high school team. The two debaters he highlighted in his description of his format were both black, Briana Whatley and Joshua Hopson, a football star from an almost all-minority town of 5,500.

At the end of our conversation, Fishback expressed an eagerness to take his formats international, with Israel one of the likeliest venues, as he knew that Israel has a rich culture of both formal and informal debate.

TODAY FISHBACK is seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Florida, and calls the black front-runner in the race, Rep. Byron Donalds, a “slave” to his donors. He has recanted his previous support for Israel’s war in Gaza and laments having once swallowed the “Kool-Aid” about Israel being America’s foremost ally. I wrote to him inquiring as to his change of views, but he did not respond.

Though the polls show Fishback far behind Donalds, he has succeeded in attracting a great deal of media attention, as well as a devoted following of young white males frustrated by their dim prospects. He has been labeled the “groyper candidate.” At a recent rally, when he called for taking money back from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, the audience shouted back, “Take it from the Jews.”

My suspicion is that Fishback is an articulate opportunist rather than a conviction politician, very much in the mode of Tucker Carlson, who is similarly interested in carving out a media career for himself. But as River Page suggests in a follow-up piece in the Free Press, it is a matter of concern that someone eager to make a media splash should invariably find the road to doing so in appealing to a “crowd of frustrated, Internet-poisoned boys screaming about the Jews.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1101. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)