The Music Behind the Noise

Years ago, we transformed our business from being a mortgage broker to being a mortgage banker. As you can imagine, there were lots of opportunities for things to go wrong during that process. There were a lot of moving parts, and we were setting up processes and doing things we hadn’t done before. I’m sure it won’t surprise you when I tell you that we stumbled, and I heard about it each time from our sales teams.

Change is never easy, and when you surrounded yourself with passionate people, it creates opportunities for people to express different perspectives. I remember talking to Mike during that time, explaining how people seem to consistently tell me how bad things are and what I was doing wrong. I was growing frustrated.

What he told me next completely changed how I handled feedback going forward. He said: “Listen for the music behind the noise.” When people get fired up about their perspectives and opinions it creates an emotional response that clouds the clarity of what they are communicating, and it comes across as noise. If we don’t “hear” them through the noise, it causes the noise to grow louder. I had to tune in and listen for the music of what they are trying to tell me. Once I heard the notes and was able to repeat them back, they felt heard, and I learned something that made us better.

Today, we invite feedback, and we are much better at hearing the music. If we are in search of the beat that can be done, not the best that we know how we need to invite the healthy collisions of different perspectives. That’s what produces the diamonds, the pressure of healthy collisions, but only when two sides are willing to listen to each other’s music and then be willing to create a better tune together.

I find today’s world has created an abundance of storms and distractions and lots of noise. Life was racing pretty fast and furious before this pandemic, and many of us were running so fast that I think God chose to slow us down a little. Even now, this can still be crazy, with changes happening regularly and new riddles to solve every day.

In the book of Kings, it says: “...and after the earthquake a fire, but he Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was when Elijah heard it”. Too often in my life, I focus on the fire, not the still small voice of God behind the fire trying to teach me or help me through it. There’s a lot of noise in this world that keeps us from hearing God’s music. It’s more important now than ever while the world has slowed down a bit to focus on hearing God’s still small voice.

Someone once asked Joan of Arc why God spoke only to her. She responded, “Sir, you are wrong. God speaks to everyone. I just listen.”

Are you listening?