I like to listen, I have learned a lot from listening carefully, most people never listen) Ernest Hemingway

“Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening when you would have preferred to speak.” Doug Larson

(If you make listening and meditation your business, you will get much more than you could get by talking) Robert Baden-Powell

(Thus when you listen to a person's speech, completely, attentively, then you are not only listening to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, you are listening to the whole of it, not a part of it) G.D. Krishnamurti

 (You can't really listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time) M. Scott Beck

(Do they listen to me?), (I never feel understood), (My boss never listens to me when I talk to him), (When I was lecturing, people seemed more interested in their phones).

Do these kind of thoughts and comments sound familiar? I have never met anyone who would acknowledge that his words are listened to and understood 100% of the time. In today's business world, I believe that we are losing listening skills due to the excessive increase in voices, words, and information available through the media in all its forms and on the Internet. We may hear everything. What is going on around us, but we fail to truly listen and comprehend.

How good is your listening? Did people ever have to make sure you were listening? Or, even worse, did they possibly accuse you of not hearing what they were trying to say?

When I was a child, they always told me that we were born to listen rather than to speak, and when I asked why, I was told that it was because we were born with two ears and two eyes, but only one mouth, and in school I learned that we should seek to understand first and then to be understood.

Listening is a combination of hearing what another person is saying and being able to validate what you are hearing. In other words, listeners are not passive. Good listening involves some form of response. Whether it's a nod of your head, saying thank you, or giving a more detailed response, it's not enough. To think that you are a good listener. The only true measure of your listening skills is if those who communicate with you know that you are a listener.

Listening can happen in many images and places, and we can say that we listen every minute throughout our waking time. Sometimes it is listening to our thoughts and bodies, and other times to other people and what is going on around us. Listening to others happens during working hours in meetings, in the hallway, in workshops or during telephone conversations and it can be listening for an individual or a group. The key question we should ask here, however, is when is it optimal to listen attentively?

Slow down before you speak

If you watch your colleagues during a conversation, you will see that most of the time they suddenly burst into conversation while the other person is still talking or have just finished saying something, without leaving a gap of even a second, and even worse, sometimes one of them starts talking before the person finishes. the other even from his speech, which can sound somewhat rude, and you will also witness someone saying something that may not be related to what the others said, which leaves the impression that the last speaker neglected what the others said, sometimes I feel that there are too many people talking Just for the sake of talking, and they rarely take the time to think hard about what they might say.

You may be lucky enough to see someone say something only after a few moments or seconds of quiet contemplation. They may just say, "Good point" or "You summed it up well." Such people tend to show more wisdom and are people we like to talk to. You can to imitate them by learning the STOP & WAIT rule (wait and stop), where these two words are an abbreviation for two very useful reminder messages for you whenever you are in any discussion or conversation:

Remembering the previous acronyms will help you hear and understand what was said and show others that you were listening, and as a result, what you say will be a clever extension of what you heard.