Listen to me…
No, you listen to me…

In reality, nobody listens to anybody!

I was waiting for some friends at a cafe and, instead of playing with my phone, I thought to pay attention to the rest of the people sitting by this cafe. What I noticed was something that I am guilty too, and I want to share with you.

Everyone was talking but something strange was going on, I noticed that everyone waits (or not) for the other person to finish what he or she has to say, only to say whatever they had in mind before even considered what they just listened.

So when my friends came, I thought I could put this to test. Now, my friends are what I consider very intelligent people to be around. And what I noticed was that most of the times, because being intelligent and smart, my friends were eager to speak and tell their opinions about whatever we were talking. So this was a confirmation for me that most of our discussions are highly affected by whatever we already have in our minds.

Are we talking to mirrors?

So, after this experience it would be in my head for some time and then it came as an AHA moment. If in a conversation, what we listen to, is what we focus on and what we focus on is what we already have in our minds then we are only (or mostly) listening to the parts of the conversation that confirm our previous knowledge and beliefs. And the confirmation bias is taking over. This means that we listen to what we “chose” to listen because it was already in our minds and our replies to what we listen are “replies” to what we were already replying (consciously or unconsciously) in our minds. Which means it is like talking to our selves and since everyone is doing it, isn’t it like there are mirrors surrounding everybody and we talk to our mirrors?

Please read the above paragraph again because I know seems complicated but that was the most simple way I could come up with…

Most of our communication is lost

I was watching a seminar recently and I found out that we have the impression that what we say when we talk to each other, most of the communication is being understood, but the sad truth is that most of it is lost. Why? Because we use words to describe what we think but words may have a very different meaning to different people. Try this, ask 5 people to think about a dog and then ask them to describe the dog they thought. Everyone will describe a different type of dog. Some will say a big black dog, some small white etc. You get the point. And note that this is just a dog we are talking about.

Think about words like love, friendship, sadness, happiness etc. And how these words are being conceived from our group when we talk about it. But we are pretty sure that the meaning is being communicated.

The truth is: the message isn’t going through! And we wonder why we have a lack of understanding. From now on I will call this concept: “talking into mirrors”.

We only listen to what we want to listen and we understand what we want to understand.

All this process is happening unconsciously and requires a lot of awareness even to see it. I ain’t no wise man though. I do this all the time myself. And it’s easy to see it on others when they do it, but hard to see that we are doing it all the time. A lot changed for me when I had this understanding. Maybe the time is come to turn the mirror.

Just listen

I met a guy not long ago. He was a very successful sales manager living across Europe and working for an international company. I asked him what was the very one thing that mattered the most for being successful at sales.

After a smile he said:

“Listen, my friend, we have one mouth and two ears”

This was his way to put best the principle of listening more and speaking less. We are living in a world in which we are constantly urged to speak up our opinion.

When we talk we only repeat what we already know but when we listen chances are we will learn something new.

Interesting book on the above:
The Lost Art of Listening, Second Edition: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships by Michael P. Nichols