Listen Up!

As children we are taught to wait our turn. Toddlers as young as 2 or 3 are reminded of this simple concept of good manners every time they budge in line to go down the slide first or grab a toy from a friend. As we approach preschool age and our verbal communication develops, we are then taught the very important rules of the classroom: Only one person should be talking at a time, you must not interrupt, and you must sit quietly and listen. Now let’s fast forward 30 or 40 years. How are we doing with those classroom rules now?

I heard an interesting statistic the other day - immediately after we listen to someone, we only recall about 50% of what they said, and long-term we only remember 20% of what we hear. I was shocked, have I really been missing 70% of what’s been happening?

It wasn’t too long after that I caught myself…I was guilty! While having a conversation with someone in my office, I was only half listening and the other half (if you could call it that) was replying to an email. Shame on me!  I realized what I was doing and immediately took my fingers off the keyboard and turned slightly to face the individual. As I was trying to catch up with the conversation I was stunned to catch myself again a short time later, but this time not just once…twice!

I was anticipating the end of the conversation and felt the need to hurry things along. Instead of listening to this individual make his final point and move on with my day, I interrupted him and finished his sentence by incorrectly stating his position. Yikes! I not only just added another 10 minutes to this conversation simply because I couldn’t sit quietly and listen, I took away this person’s power by trying to finish his thought.

In our fast paced life we think in order to stay ahead and be competitive we must be proud of the fact that we can efficiently “multitask”. This buzz word became popular several years ago as a positive thing and everyone soon added it to their resume. But the fact is Wikipedia defines human multitasking as the performance by an individual appearing to handle more than one task at the same time. New research is showing that humans aren’t as good as they think at handling many things at once. Not only that, but we are finding we’re also damaging our relationships because our interpersonal skills are waning.

Possessing good listening skills can benefit all aspects of your life. It can create strong teams, resolve conflicts, and build trust and respect. It may take some practice on your part, but by simply going back to those once upon a time classroom rules you can become a good listener again.

Jenny
Sister of Soul

Soulspiration of the Week:
"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." ~Epictetus