Are we listening well? Why what we measure shapes how we lead
From our earliest days, HOPE International has been shaped by listening.
Our founder, Jeff Rutt, felt God’s prompting to serve families living in poverty in Ukraine following the fall of the Soviet Union. He responded by mobilizing funds and galvanizing support.
And then he listened again.
A Ukrainian pastor explained that the containers of free goods being shipped to Zaporizhzhia were unintentionally depressing local initiative and creating unhealthy dependency. Jeff took the pastor’s concerns seriously, shifting HOPE’s core methodology to investing in microenterprise development.
Jeff put us on a path of listening. But in the two decades I’ve served with HOPE, I’ve needed regular reminders that we need to work hard at listening well. It’s not a one-time activity, but an ongoing posture.
That conviction has shaped two books I’ve had the privilege of co-writing this year. At first glance, Mission and Metrics and The Prayerful Leader might seem to inhabit different worlds. One is about measurement and impact assessment. The other is a devotional focused on prayer.
But beneath both is the same question: Are we listening well?
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The first strategic planning season at HOPE began with our leadership team sitting around a table discussing what we hoped to accomplish. We explored expansion opportunities and speculated about how we could better serve the men and women we were reaching.
Our more recent planning process began differently. We started with years of surveys, evaluations, focus groups, and client interviews. HOPE’s leadership team spent our first days reading what the people we serve had told us. We considered individual perspectives alongside broad themes and findings. Before introducing our own ideas, we listened to theirs.
And we listened to God. We devoted entire sessions to prayer, asking our Good Shepherd to guide our decisions and direction.
As we listened to God and others, we set different priorities and pursued dreams that didn’t originate with us. The simple practice of listening first is changing the course of our organization.
Too often, as leaders’ influence grows, our ability to listen well decreases. As schedules get full, prayer gets crowded out. The same can be true of our willingness to listen to those around us, including the very people we set out to serve. As we gain experience and grow more confident navigating challenges, we can begin to behave as though we no longer need to actively listen to God or others. I hope these two books serve as reminders — to me first and foremost — to resist that temptation.
Mission and Metrics is ultimately about listening to those we seek to serve. We do that through data but because of love. Loving our neighbors leads us to listen. Listening helps us learn. Learning allows us to improve. And improvement equips us to love and serve our neighbors more faithfully.
The Prayerful Leader invites us to listen to God: the wisest One in the room. Through practices of prayer, we slow down, pay attention, and seek His guidance for how we live and lead.
These practices may look different, but they require the same recognition that we don’t have the answers. Listening is both an expression of humility and an act of love. There is much we do not know, and listening is helping us learn.
If you’d like to grow in listening to God or listening to those you serve, we’ve made several free tools available for leaders and teams who want to keep learning together at missionandmetrics.org.
