Listen Up

Someone told me today that the only difference between the Chinese words for “book” and “stupid” is one of tone. Many of the languages of Southeast Asia and Africa are tone languages. These languages use pitch to signal a difference in meaning between words, so it’s critically important that one listen carefully to anyone who is speaking so as not to misconstrue what they are saying.

Interestingly, one of the first, best lessons I got in sales was to listen carefully and speak a lot less than I listened for exactly the same reason.

How often have you started to think of the reply before you’ve fully heard the question? How often do we think about what we’re going to say next and ignore what’s being said to us? I’m not sure if it’s the ADD induced by the pace of information being thrown at us or just plain self-centeredness, but we all need to listen a lot more carefully. There is meaning in tone and information in complete sentences.