Key Management Development Models, 3rd Edition

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Active listening

The big picture

As children we are taught not to interrupt when others are talking and are asked to be quiet and listen. Our brain can process language faster than it can be spoken and so for much of the time when others are talking to us our mind is not engaged. We speak on average around the globe at 150 words per minute (2.5 words per second). If you took a recording of someone speaking your native language, increased the speed but maintained the original pitch, you could understand it as perfectly speeded up to 600 words per minute as you could at the standard spoken rate of 150 wpm. We can find ourselves drifting off on a short mental holiday and not hearing the speaker, or formulating the next thing to say and saying ...