Listen Up or Lose Out

6

Identifying Your Listening Missteps

[W]e must understand that barriers to meaningful communication are multiple, and manifest everywhere.

—KENNETH KRAMER

IRONICALLY, WHEN A situation calls for listening, people often respond by speaking. Organizational consultant Adam Kahane says that “our most common way of listening is not listening.” And psychologist Thomas Gordon estimated that there’s a 90 percent likelihood that a “listener” will respond with one or more ways of speaking when someone talks about a problem he’s wrestling with.¹ And the late ...