I got the following quote today and wanted to share:
Most of us were born
hearing well, but all of us must learn to listen well. Listening is a
skill, an art that is in need of being cultivated.
Dr. Ralph Nichols,
considered by many to be an authority on the subject, believes that we think
four, perhaps five, times faster than we talk. This means that if a speaker
utters one hundred twenty words a minute, the audience thinks at about five
hundred words a minute. That difference offers a strong temptation to listeners
to take mental excursions . . . to think about last night's bridge game or
tomorrow's sales report or the need to get that engine tune-up before next
weekend's trip to the mountains . . . then phase back into the speaker's
talk.
Research at the
University of Minnesota reveals that in listening to a ten-minute talk, hearers
operate at only a twenty-eight percent efficiency. And the longer the talk, the
less we understand, the less we track with our ears what somebody's mouth is
saying.
–Chuck Swindoll
I often wonder if communicators (including myself) are cognizant of where the hearers are. In my own journey to becoming a great communicator I have learned that the speaking and the listening are both essential in connecting with others-in career and personal life.
By the way, if you want to test your speaking and listening skills, go spend some time with children and test your results.