Call on the Quiet One First

You already know who’s going to talk first in your 9 a.m. You could write the transcript before the meeting even starts — same opening line, same confident tone, same person filling the first thirty seconds of silence before anyone else gets a foothold. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone else. Meanwhile the person who actually flagged this exact problem three weeks ago hasn’t spoken in a meeting in a weeks.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C — Clarity: The Meeting Where the Same Three People Always Talk

Every team develops a script nobody wrote down — who talks first, who fills the silence, who learned somewhere along the way that speaking up costs more than it returns. Left unmanaged, that script quietly becomes your actual decision-making process, whether or not it’s your best one. The loudest three voices aren’t necessarily wrong. They’re just not the only ones in the room with something worth hearing.

H — Hear: Quick to Hear Was Never Optional

“Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” (James 1:19)

James wrote this to churches scattered under real pressure — people with plenty of reason to talk over each other. He put “quick to hear” first, and the order isn’t incidental. The Greek pairs takhys (quick) with bradys (slow) — a deliberate contrast built into the sentence: fast toward listening, slow toward talking, slower still toward anger. It reads less like gentle advice and more like a sequence to follow in order.

There’s a companion verse worth pulling in here: Proverbs 18:13, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” Solomon doesn’t soften it — answering before listening isn’t just inefficient, it’s foolish. Between James and Proverbs, Scripture treats the order of hearing-then-speaking as a matter of wisdom, not just courtesy.

A leader who only hears the loudest voice in the room has mistaken volume for value.

The people in your meetings who talk least aren’t necessarily thinking least. Some of them have simply learned, correctly, that the room rewards speed over substance.

E — Exchange: Trade Talking First for Listening First

Trade your instinct to open the meeting with your own read on the problem for the discipline of hearing the room’s quietest voice before you speak at all. This costs you something real — the room may sit briefly in silence, and silence in a meeting feels like a leadership failure even when it’s actually the opposite.

Because God’s love makes room to hear the weakest voice before it ever silences it, how does that change who talks first in your next meeting?

W — Walk: Call on the Quiet Voice Before You Speak Today

In your next meeting, identify the person least likely to jump in on their own, and ask them directly for their read on the problem before anyone else — including you — weighs in. Then hold the silence through their answer instead of filling it for them. This is a small, repeatable habit, not a one-time gesture.

Closing question: Whose read on the problem have you genuinely not heard yet this quarter?