Listening

News
No new updates for this week.

Quote
“A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?”

My Thoughts
Listening is a critical skill to develop for any relationship. Becoming better listeners will help us in all areas of our lives. Most people struggle with listening. Instead of listening many people are merely thinking about what they are going to say while the other person is talking. This leads to miscommunication, disagreements, and arguments.

I'll share a story about how this can affect business relationships.

This past weekend I met some friends at a bar called Prost. I won't go into all the details of what happened, however the main problem here was listening. Basically we asked the staff for something, but they didn't appear to listen. So we talked with one manager and she didn't really seem to listen either. We then talked with another manager and he also didn't listen. In the end what we requested wasn't fulfilled which actually wasn't the problem. The problem was in the handling of the request. No one could explain why things were handled as they were.

So what was the outcome?

Well now myself nor anyone close to me will go back to Prost (something similar had happened there before but it wasn't as bad). The situation could have been avoided if one person out of the five we talked with had stopped and listened. Will that hurt their business? Maybe not right away, but if it continues to happen it will certainly cause a loss in customers.

I encourage you to be a better listener this week. When someone is talking try to not have any thoughts, just focus on what they are saying.

Have an amazing week.