Are You a Reader or a Listener at Work?
If you want to play to your strengths, knowing the answer is critical
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When Dwight Eisenhower served as supreme commander of the Allied forces during World War II, journalists raved about his press conferences. His responses to questions were always brief, but beautifully polished. He showed total command of his subject matter.
A few years later, however, when Eisenhower became the president of the United States, his interviews with the press became a source of frustration. Reporters said he rambled without direction, never answering their questions. He was criticized as ill-informed and awkward.
It turned out that back when Eisenhower was supreme commander, his aides made sure that questions from the press were submitted to him well before he answered them publicly. That way, he could think through his responses and refine them. When he later moved to an open press conference style, where questions were fired at him off the cuff, he floundered. Eisenhower didn’t know that he was a reader, not a listener.
It’s a question to ask yourself, too: Are you a reader or a listener? Do you process information better in written form or when it’s conveyed to you verbally? The late Peter Drucker, known as the founder of modern management, discussed in his Harvard Business Review piece “Managing Oneself” how few people know the answer to this question, giving the example of Eisenhower.
And yet whichever of those two categories we fall into, taking advantage of our fundamental strength is critical to our success. It can, as Drucker wrote, help transform someone from “an ordinary person — hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre — into an outstanding performer.”
Reading and listening are two fundamentally different modes of learning. Reading is a standalone activity, but it tends to create stronger memories because your brain needs to fill in many gaps that listening pre-populates. What does the setting look like? What do the voices sound like? Reading uses back-tracking eye movements to maximize retention. Turning pages is a built-in break, giving you time to process what you’ve read. Reading also provides structural cues from punctuation, and physical books give you a spatial sense of where…
