Astronaut Chris Hadfield opens his TED Talk with this question: “What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?” He then recounts being outside on his first spacewalk—i.e. floating around in the vacuum of space—when his left eye went blind, immediately followed by his right eye.

When it comes to personal risk-taking, most professionals operate in the mode of “less is more”—consciously or otherwise. That’s too bad, because there is no trust without personal risk.

Last week, I shared a two-question test to help you discern when it’s effective to shift gears from listening to advising/problem-solving (“Am I confident I really understand the real issue?” and “Am I confident they’re really able to hear me?”). This week, I’ve got specific tips to help you accurately and confidently answer the second question. You might be surprised at how often you miss some or all of these cues.

If you’ve been to one of my workshops, , you probably felt frustrated more than once when I insisted that you slooooooow down in conversations, and listen far longer than feels natural or comfortable before you offer your advice/opinions/solutions. (Why? Because that’s the key to being influential). And you probably wanted to know how to know when it’s OK to switch gears. Today’s tip reviews the answer.

If you’ve been a Weekly Tip reader for a while, you know that empathy gets a lot of my time and attention. It is directly tied, after all, to the surprising secret to being influential. What fascinates me about empathy is that there is always room to improve. Always.