Is communication about talking or tolerating?

Within The Leadership Method, we work on communication.

It’s one of our favourite sessions because it always exposes something uncomfortable and powerful.

Most of us are not listening.

We’re waiting.
Waiting to fix.
Waiting to share our own experience.
Waiting to correct.
Waiting to make the feeling go away.

Years ago, during my coaching training, our tutor said something that resonated:

“You’re not listening. You’re just preparing your response.”

I’d never seen it like that before.
But she was right.

Difficult parent–child communication isn’t about talking.

It’s about tolerating.

Real communication isn’t about words.
It’s about what you can withstand.

Listening means:

• staying present when someone is upset,

• not hijacking the moment with your own story,

• not rushing in to make it better,

• not trying to control the outcome.

And that is hard.

Especially as parents.

Because when our child is struggling, everything in us screams:
Do something. Fix this. End it. Make it stop.

And more often than not, that urgency is about our discomfort, not theirs.

The mums felt this viscerally in our last group.

“I thought I was a good listener… turns out I’m a fixer.”

It was a revelation.

She needed to fix in order to make the discomfort go away.

Why fixing feels safer than listening

We fix because listening is uncomfortable.

Listening means:

• feeling anger or frustration without trying to reduce it,

• hearing pain without reframing it,

• allowing emotions to exist without managing them.

It requires focus.
Restraint.
And the ability to sit with feelings we’d rather escape.

I know this intimately.

As a mother of a teenage girl who could bring me to my knees with her painful, sad narratives, evenings used to feel endless. She would talk, in minute detail, and I would spend hours trying to fix her.

Until I realised: she didn’t want fixing.

She wanted somewhere safe to offload the emotional weight of the day.
Someone strong enough to hold loneliness, low self-esteem, and heavy feelings without trying to tidy them up.

When I stopped fixing and started listening,  really listening,  and validating her experience, even when it was uncomfortable, the big emotions passed.

She offloaded.
I owned my own emotions.
And every morning she woke up lighter, positive, ready to go.

I won’t pretend it’s easy.
I still find it challenging.

But the alternative,  fixing, controlling, resisting,  is far harder, and deeply counterproductive.

What happened when they felt heard

When the mums practised listening,  and experienced being properly heard,  things shifted.

“It was amazing how powerful it was when someone simply repeated back what I said,  I felt seen.”

“Hearing ‘that makes sense’ felt so powerful. I felt really understood.”

And something else emerged: space.

“It gave me space to expand my thinking… I got to my own answers.”

When no one rushes in to solve, the mind does something remarkable.

It starts working for itself.

This is what we forget.

People don’t need advice to think.
They need space.

Doing less changed everything

One mum said:

“I really like the idea of doing less. What a load off.”

Because when she did less when she didn’t engage, fix, or escalate the moment passed.

“Not engaging with it meant it passed quickly, previously the whole morning would have been derailed.”

That’s not passive parenting.
That’s leadership.

This is why communication matters

The art of communication isn’t about saying the right thing.

It’s about:

• noticing the panic that rises when we don’t intervene,

• understanding our need to control the narrative,

• recognising our fear of allowing others to feel what they feel,

• and choosing to stay present anyway.

These aren’t “soft skills”.

They are the hardest ones.

And they are the foundation of every relationship your child will ever have.

This is the work

This is what we do inside The Leadership Method.

We train capacity, the ability to listen without fixing, to lead without controlling, and to stay present when things are uncomfortable.

Understand the method in Self Led our online programme or join us for The Coaching Edition and learn how to fully implement these skills.