Thursday, October 16, 2008

Listen?

Over the last couple of months it has become evident to me that people can't hear one another. We've all become so accustomed to tuning in/out of the conversation that we can't hear basic answers. You ask someone what time it is; they answer 11am and you still don't know what time it is! This is not strictly tied to co-workers, husbands, wives, or kids. I've noticed the phenomenon by all of the above...recently.

I figured I'd remind folks that we should spend less time talking and more time listening. Listening to the answer of a question you just asked is simple respect, but listening to what a person is really trying to say in basic conversation would be darned useful too.

Boy am I behind. I figured that out when I got the following twitter message from Barbara Nixon:

Tomorrow is deadline for proposals for Int'l Listening Assoc. conference in spring. Have you submitted yet? http://www.listen.org

Far too many of us have been doing more talking than listening. There's an association, a website, and a convention. Cool, eh?

3 comments:

Barbara B. Nixon said...

Greg,

Thanks so much for mentioning the importance of listening!

War Eagle,

Barbara Nixon
AU Class of '84

John Dorner said...

Good article (of which I'm very guilty)! I read this earlier this week, then today noticed that bigsky52 had tagged several sites related to this that you (and your readers) might be interested in: http://delicious.com/bigsky52/active_listening

Unknown said...

Sorry Dad! You should know by now that I have elephants in my ear though :)