Why Don’t We Listen To Others

Question - Who is the most important person in the wolrd?

I’m sure you’ll come up with some different names, but deep down we all know the right answer. Don’t We! We all know who is #1, the best person around, the number one topic all the time, and YES it is ourself.

This is the case with EVERY single person, HOWEVER not everyone acts the same way or feels a need to justify their self worth through either talking over others, adding their own story or feeling a need to comment about their own experience in conversations.

When you are in a conversation with somone, what is your conscious telling you, where is your mind really at? Are you really paying attention, or thinking about what will be for dinner, or thinking about what comment or story you could tell to make the conversation about you.

How do you feel when a person listens to you 100%, when there actually interested asking questions and showing an interest in you. It’s a pretty awsome feeling.

I did a great exercise a week back with a group of leaders on listening. The task was to be in pairs and one member had to speak for 5 minutes non stop while their partner had to listen completely; no distractions, not taking their eyes of their partners eyes, no body langauage changes and at the end they swapped over.

The comments made after the task went generally along these lines;

The talker – It was amazing to have someones full attention for that period of time, to know that they were interested in my conversation.

The listener – That was the hardest thing that I have done. There were so many distractions that I wanted to look at.

So, if it feels so good when someone really listens to us, WHY do we not return the favour and ensure that we give 100% listening ability when others speak to us. Are we really that disinterested or have we formed such a bad habit that our time and self importance is worth more to us than listening to someone else?

I was speaking with a collegue last week and shared a story, I knew before I had finished, that as soon as I finished they were going to tell me a similar story that happened to them. This occurs probably 70% of the time. Why is my question? Are we really so insecure that we need to make ourself feel more important, by talking about our #1 topic.

The next time you’re in a conversation try this, look at the person in the eyes, the whole time that their speaking, ask some questions that shows that you have been listening, get curious about what they’re talking about and at the end say nothing about yourself and acknowledge them. It want be easy but trust me IT WILL BE A GREAT FEELING!

Until next time, take care and happy listening!
Michael Griffiths