Shhh! Listen!

Have you ever been talked at? You believe you?re involved in a conversation, but it is actually so one-sided that you?re convinced the other person has not truly listened to anything you?ve said.

Have you encountered any of these people? Are you one of these people?

• Entrepreneurs who go to networking meetings, thinking only about what they are going to say and not what they might hear.
• Managers who focus only on what they need to tell their employees, rather than considering what their employees might need to tell them.
• Business people in a conversation who are obviously thinking about their next statement, instead of listening to what is being said in the moment.

Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.
~~Bernard Baruch

I?ve always taught my children and my workshop participants that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason ? we should do twice as much listening as we do talking.

Interact conducted a survey recently and found that 69% of managers are not comfortable communicating with their employees about . . . anything! Maybe if the managers would stop worrying about what they are going to say and instead focus on what is being said to them, the process might be a little smoother.

Entrepreneurs will complain that networking events are a waste of time even though they met a significant number of new people. Maybe they spent too much of that time talking at their new connections, rather than listening and learning from them?

So stop a minute and listen. Do you hear that sound coming from another person in the room? Yes! It?s their part of the conversation. Stop thinking about what you are going to say next and make the effort to really listen to what they are saying right now.

“Silent” and “listen” are spelled with the same letters.
~~Author Unknown