Conversations of Distraction

How many people on the subway averted their eyes from other people, rather than saying a simple hello?

Listening is the easy part. Recognizing the stranger in front of or beside you is a person is the hard part.

learn to focus buddy!

Danny, damn you rock! I was in two meetings this week: one with a prospect and another was strategic and comprised of coworkers. Both were shouting contests and never was there a moment when anyone actually did any shouting. I observed this pattern almost the instant I got underway in each instance. How vexing. Hemingway said few people truly listen. He's right. I think our urges, innate I believe, to be important to a given ecology, even if it is of the fleeting business variety, compels us to wrestle our words in when the opportunities present themselves. I'm not sure there is a lot of listening taking place comparatively. So I try to remind people I'm gathered with for business purposes that opinions are terrific, but they're friggin' sensational when married with data. Business opinions can be the antidote to implementing a tactic that will yield empirical results, not just personalized, agenda-driven and preferential ones. So when it comes to listening in business contexts, I try hard to ensure my contributions are as much rooted in my findings as they are my personal preferences.

I don't think you're off base at all.

I think everyone struggles with some self-serving tendencies in various forms and to various degrees. It's only human to feel a dedication to yourself, and that is often times manifested in hearing only what you want to hear at the time.

In college this was a BIG issue I had to overcome. If I thought I had an assignment or topic understood, I'd tune out anything else said and focus on what I wanted to, whatever it was. That came back to bit me in the rear end a couple of times before I learned.

So no, everybody, for whatever reasons, often times allow their listening skills to sit idly when they should be at full attention. It's a tough skill to learn, but one you do, it's one of the best skill sets to have!

Danny, wonderful topic as the majority of your blog topics and posts are. My take, there is a lot of "noise" out there and I'm not referring to only the audible. The "noise" is everywhere.

Are you off base, no I don't believe so. Are we listening less, perhaps. What we seem to be lacking is good solid communication. It takes two or more to do so. Seems at times even in the face to face world of personal interaction, well the interaction part is lacking.

In some ways the face to face interaction can be like that of a tweet stream - one party tweets but it seems the other party just isn't getting the message given. Perhaps they are and are going to wait and reply to it later, not likely I guess. In the face to face analogy you can't really save that "tweet" for future reference.

Okay I'm rambling, my solution well it's simple take the conversation off of the public stream and head into a one on one DM conversation. We all need to practice listening better and even when we think we have it nailed, we could still use more practice. Time to get out of the "I" frame mind.

Hopefully this makes a little sense. My best to you and everyone!

Great topic! Thanks to the ridiculous amount of time I spend on the Web and social networks, my attention span has definitely suffered. Sadly, I'll catch myself doing something similar to the story you described. I'll be on my laptop on the couch, half listening to what my fiance is telling me and nodding in agreement when I'm not even processing what he's saying. That's terrible!

We need to be more aware of how our multi-tasking and frequent distractions really put a damper on our listening and in-person conversation skills. And then we need to make a serious effort to not become the type of people who can't focus on an in-person conversation for more than two minutes.

I love how the social Web has completely revolutionized the way we communicate. But, we should never allow ourselves to become so accommodated to communicating online that we lose the ability to communicate, listen and share in real life.

I read a bunch of books about emotional intelligence a few years ago and it's a sad fact that many people just don't have any, I also think it's one of the reasons the world is like it is. Many nasty side effects come as a result of too many people wrapped up in their own private bubbles, self absorbed and egocentric.
Prejudiced, judgmental behavior become the norm when the most important person in the world is consistently yourself, a being incapable of imagining how it feels to walk a mile in another man's shoes. I have wished for the longest time that it was a subject that's taken more seriously...One of the most emotionally intelligent people ever was Princess Diana. You might remember Danny, she took her two boys to the London Underground to spend some time with the homeless people there, somewhat unheard of for members of the royal family....she was simply trying to instill in them the ability to look out of their own wealthy and well protected bubble and maybe for a moment feel how it feels to be someone else...not faking, or feigning interest, because with genuine compassion you really don't have to pretend.

Lots of people are terrible at really listening. Are we that bad at it? I'd say yes, if only because there are so many things around us these days that command some attention that we can't just sit down and listen. We need to relearn the art of classical conversation.

Danny, what a poignant example of a common occurrence. I don't know that we listen less, although self absorption has been portrayed as being a generational characteristic, I have a theory that it is more a case of transparent self absorption rather than increased self absorption. Younger generations haven't learned to "fake it" and perhaps there is a shift in expected social behaviors that means they won't ever feel required to pretend to be more interested in another's thoughts than they really are.

I think developing the "skill of listening" is less important than developing our desire to hear. I can listen out of courtesy because I care about the person or I can seek to really hear them because I care about what they care about. If I care what they think, how they feel, what is important to them then I will invest in hearing what they say.

When I coach I call it "hearing between the lines" - connecting to what is NOT said. But in any relationship I find that is where the true dialog takes place. What you witnessed wasn't a dialog - it was parallel monologues.

Read Pride and Prejudice (not because it is a favorite of mine - but it DID show me what I did NOT want to grow up to be) and you'll see that parallel monologues isn't a new cultural development. The satire makes it funny, but in reality it is just sad.

Most people know they aren't really being heard. Maybe, if we thought anyone really heard what we were saying we would risk saying something meaningful. Of course, maybe if more people took the risk of saying something meaningful more people would begin to really hear.

Just because it isn't new doesn't mean it isn't real or that it isn't hurtful. It is hurtful to individuals, to our local community and to our global community. Only when we learn to hear can we truly understand and only when we understand can we truly find the synergy that is inherent in our differences.

Danny, how can you listen when so many people are talking about the same thing? Imagine going to a friend's party and you start talking to the beautiful girl in a raggedy shirt and blue jeans over by the corner. The conversation matures and you feel like you're just talking in circles about the same topic - over and over again.

You get bored and move down to the kitchen to get a snack. There's a guy that starts talking to you and asks you a question. But guess what! It's about the very same topic you considered boring that you were talking about with the girl by the corner. So, you move outside the house and over by the pool you see a bunch of people together, surrounding this short, black-haired woman in a suit. You move closer to hear what's so interesting that has caught the attention of many, and there you are... listening to the very same topic. The problem is that in this case, the woman knew her audience and dressed accordingly to avoid people to "move on" like you did with the girl by the corner (the appearance makes the group stick since she probably knows what she's talking about). What do you do now? You leave the party. You're bored. There has to be something else, with more value, somewhere else...

It's not that we don't listen - is that like joey_strawn said - it gets hard to care when you everyone just keeps talking about the same old topic.

Cheers! ~Paul

I don't think it's getting worse, sorry. We're surrounded by heartbreak and isolation at every turn. I step onto a bus and I'm surrounded by eyes searching for understanding, looking to be seen, or just gazing at the floor, conceding another day of loneliness and heartbreak. We can pick almost anyone, look into their eyes, and say slowly: How ARE you? And the words more often than not gush out. That, my friend, is a beautiful scene to witness. I've recently written about this same topic if anyone is interested in more: http://www.davidweedmark.com/2010/5-keys-to-the-art-of-listening/

Danny - This is a common problem with no simple answer. Asking someone to care is like asking them to change colors. If they don't care from the onset what can be done to 'make them' care?

What needs to happen is we need to stop thinking that we can literally communicate with everyone. That's just not possible. In certain areas we will find the right people who get the message well and run with it. You will rarely convince someone that you are right, they are wrong and they should side with you.

Make sense?

It's a troubling aspect of any relationship but I see it coming down to a single root cause. The good news it that it can be fixed by one simple rule: care.

Problems arise in listening because people tend to care more about what they are going through than who they are listening to, but if you genuinely care about the person talking, the questions come naturally.

Now I'm not saying that every time someone doesn't ask questions they don't care about the person they're talking to, but the more and more I see the scenarios you described, it comes down to general caring and interest. We've heard the stories about work every day for the past 3 months and we've sat through this exact same meeting 4 times over 9 days. It gets hard to care.

Our job as marketers and community-builders is to teach people how to care about people again, to communicate rather than simply talk.

I don't think you're off base, Danny.

Listening is an art, it takes effort to do it (and to do it well). How many times have I gone to functions and had people nod meaninglessly at what I was saying while looking over my shoulder to see who else was there? How many times have I sat in the same meetings, listening to people who were clearly not listening to each other?

At one point it seemed that people weren't listening because they were thinking of what to say. I've been guilty of that, myself. I actually try not to do that, but I've found that when I pause before responding, inevitably someone steps in to fill the few seconds of silence.

What you're seeing, though, is even more troubling. It's like people aren't even pretending to listen anymore, they're just taking turns talking. You may be on to something with the endless distractions - with social media, there is always someone there to respond, so maybe we're getting conditioned to look for an audience instead of an interaction? I hope not. :(

This is a great topic, Danny. Thanks!