Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words. Ecclesiasticus
I’m not the only one.
Someone has just spoken to me and one of two things has happened:
1) I ask them to repeat the entire thought.
2) I say “OK” and then have no idea what I just said ok to.
Yikes. It’s called not paying attention. Or it’s called multi-tasking and doing a pitiful job. Or it’s called disrespect.
How much more efficient would I be if I paid attention the first time? How much time would I save and the speaker save if they only have to say it once?
How can I change?
By turning and facing the person when I’m ready to listen.
By letting the person know that either I’m ready or I’m not ready to listen.
By repeating back to the speaker a summary of what I heard.
We can only improve by giving it another try. Here I go, again…
xxxxx
So I tested the above theory by turning to the person and facing them before they began to speak. It didn’t work…very well. I still ended up asking for their thought to be repeated.
It’s still better to ask for repetition than it is to acknowledge without really hearing (at least for me).
Hard of hearing or hard of listening – I’m probably both.
Bryan Dear
April 13, 2010 at 6:53 pm |
Bryan, I found your blog post when researching the phrase “hard of listening”. I agree with you that communication is hard work. Even when I can hear every word, I often have to ask for clarification to grok the meaning.
One of my theories is that pronouns are the enemy. Wish I had a dollar for every time I asked a question like, “Who is the ‘they’ in that sentence?” or “What this is that?”.