Learning to Listen

That understanding didn’t arrive fully formed. For a long time listening wasn’t where I placed my value, doing was. I’m a doer, I initiate, I execute, I move things forward, and that instinct has served me well in life and in work, but it also shaped how I showed up creatively. I saw solutions quickly and wanted to act on them, momentum felt like progress and pausing felt unnecessary.

Control sat quietly underneath all of that, not control in the sense of power or dominance, but control as preparation, order and time. I’ve always hated being late, I still do, and I’ve joked for years that if I’m ten minutes early I’m already five minutes late. That way of thinking helps me feel calm and grounded, but it can also create tension when others don’t move through the world the same way. What feels considered to me can feel rigid to someone else, and what helps me function can sometimes spill into shared space in ways I don’t intend.

Creative environments were where I really started to notice this.

Collaboration often felt harder than it needed to be, not because I didn’t value other people’s input, but because of how feedback was delivered. Criticism without care, opinions framed as authority, a constant focus on what wasn’t working with very little sense of what was. Some people believe pressure sharpens creativity and that harshness makes better work, maybe it does for some, but for me it eroded trust and over time collaboration stopped feeling expansive and started feeling defensive.

I wasn’t innocent in that either. I could be stubborn, protective of my ideas, slow to open up when I felt talked down to, and ego played a part, but not in the way it’s often described. It wasn’t about needing to win, it was about self-preservation. When your work is closely tied to who you are, criticism doesn’t land as neutral feedback, it lands as personal judgement.

That’s probably why titles have never meant much to me. Junior, senior, director, they don’t tell me how someone thinks, listens or collaborates, they don’t guarantee empathy, clarity or respect. I’ve never been motivated by hierarchy or status, what matters to me is how someone works, how they communicate, and whether they treat the people around them well.

As I’ve grown, listening has shifted from something I tolerated to something I actively value, not passive listening, but listening as filtering. Hearing what actually matters beneath the noise, asking questions that clarify rather than complicate, knowing when to challenge and when to step back. Ironically, that shift has made the making easier. When you listen properly you don’t have to produce as much, you don’t chase unnecessary ideas, and you design to solve the right problem rather than every opinion in the room.

This wasn’t about letting go of who I am or fixing something that was broken. It was growth, the kind that happens gradually, shaped by experience rather than intention. Just like a brand identity evolves over time, responding to new contexts and pressures, people do too, and you don’t always notice it happening until you realise you’re responding differently than you used to.

I still care deeply about what I make, I still have opinions, I still notice everything, but I’m less interested in being right and more interested in getting somewhere better. I don’t need my ideas to win, I need the work to work.

Learning to listen didn’t make me quieter, it made me clearer, and that clarity has changed everything.