George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Picture this: someone is speaking to you, expressing their thoughts carefully for you to understand. You wait for the breaks in the conversation when you think they’ve finished talking, and then you interrupt with your own piece of information or repeat what was just said. “Oh, I know just how you feel,” you say, or “I had the same thing happen to me. Let me tell you about it!” You fail to listen. You create your own ideas. You miss the message and the opportunity to understand. It’s about your agenda, not theirs. Have you ever experienced this? Often, you think you’ve understood what was said, but the reality is that you spent the whole time formulating a reply and forgot to actually listen. Arguably, listening is the most difficult skill in communication, and we’re getting worse at it. What We Listen Vs. What We Understand There is a lag time between listening ...
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