By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhanced your listening skills. Reading time: 2:54.

“Don’t speak until you can see the whites in their eyes.”

That could be the business leader’s equivalent of Colonel William Prescott’ s orders at the Battle of Bunker Hill : Don’t shoot until you see the whites in their eyes.”

Indeed holding your tongue while getting physically closer to your complaining customers, to your competitive colleagues, to your demanding superiors, to your frustrated employees and/or to your dissatisfied stockholders etc. is critical.

Don’t speak until you can first get close enough to listen to them clearly with a heightened awareness that makes your eyes — and their eyes- glisten.

The closer you are, the more your ears — and their ears —will listen to each other; the more your eyes- and their eyes- will glisten with each other.

No wonder, the most effective leaders know the closer they get to their adversaries, the more readily they will shine FROM the light in the white’s of their adversary’s eyes than in any spotlight they shine on themselves.

No wonder leaders, striving to get closer to their rivals or to their followers, revere the prominence of the word -“listen”-embedded in the word “glisten.” One drives the other. Listeners glisten and “glisteners” listen.

Listeners glisten. That ‘s what General George McClellan did in the Civil War.

Instead of berating his troops, instead of ranting and threatening after his Union army suffered defeats, McClellan sought to get closer to them, physically close enough so that his eyes saw the whites of their eyes and their eyes saw the whites of his eyes.

The Colonel listened and glistened with his troops UP Close and Personal : listening and glistening more than speaking; commiserating and glistening more than merely communicating.

Glistening Eyes Listening

“You have no idea how the men brighten up now when I go among them. I can see every eye glisten,” Col. McClellan wrote to his wife.

Indeed, the longer you keep your proverbial powder dry and the closer you get to your adversary the more targeted your performance and the more effective your results.

On the battle field, consider the performance of the American Colonists.

They heeded the orders of Col. Prescott. They held their fire until they were only 150 feet from the British soldiers.

Even though, the American Colonists were out-manned and out-gunned. Yet they forced the British to settle for a pyrrhic victory.

The British suffered more than 1,000 dead or wounded, twice as many casualties as the American Colonists.

Rifling with precision rather than buck shotting with bombast, eyesight can shape a leader’s insight.

Consider the awesome power of the eye: Packing 100 times more nerves per muscle than in any other area of the body.

From a mile away, the human eye can discern more than 11,000 different colors.

From five miles away, the human eye can detect the light of a solitary candle . From a mountain-top, the human eye can detect a match flame some 50 miles away.

And from inches away the human eye can glisten with a radiant power seeing the whites in the eyes of others that SPEAKS volumes.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Leverage the insight in your eyesight to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

SUBSCRIBE: Have a Leadership Mint delivered to your E-mail every business day. It’s free. Just click the SIGN ME UP box in the upper left column.