Below are excerpts from books and articles as well as quotes that
reflect the mission and message of the Listen First Project.
Egotism is being stuck on yourself, insisting; perhaps quite unconsciously, on seeing everything through the lens of your own interests, your own intelligence, and your own views, capacities, and opinions. With too much egotism, listening is impossible...
The next time you are in a conversation pay attention to your listening. Don’t just go on automatic pilot. Instead, reflect on what is actually going on. Chances are you will notice that more often than not, when another person is talking, you are not listening. You may be more or less hearing what the person is saying, getting the general drift, but you are probably also preparing or anticipating the remark you will soon be making in rejection or agreement with what you are hearing...
To truly listen is to shed, as much as possible, all of your protective mechanisms, at least for the time of listening. To listen is to be willing to simply be present with what you hear without trying to figure it out or control it. It might cause you to hear something you don’t like, to consider its validity, and therefore to think something you never thought before-or to feel something you never felt before. If you want to stay open to life and to change, you have to listen...
But we are so accustomed to not being listened to that we take it for granted and even see it as normal. This is why it is so startling, and so powerful, almost magical, when we are actually heard by another person within the openness of true listening."
Excerpt from Taking our Places
If you're like most people, you probably seek first to be understood; you want to get your point across. And in doing so, you may ignore the other person completely, pretend that you're listening, selectively hear only certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, but miss the meaning entirely. So why does this happen? Because most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your mind what you are going to say, the questions you are going to ask, etc. You filter everything you hear through your life experiences, your frame of reference. You check what you hear against your autobiography and see how it measures up. And consequently, you decide prematurely what the other person means before he/she finishes communicating."
Excerpt from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
"Even before the age of digital distractions, people could remember only about 10% of what was said in a face-to-face conversation after a brief distraction, according to a 1987 study that remains a key gauge of conversational recall. Researchers believe listening skills have since fallen amid more multitasking and interruptions...
The failure to listen well not only prolongs meetings and discussions but also can hurt relationships and damage careers. However, it is possible to improve your listening skills—first, by becoming aware of the ways you may tune others out... Some people are busy thinking about what they want to say next... Others listen only long enough to figure out whether the speaker's views conform to their own... Still others interrupt to spout solutions—often before the problem has fully been identified... A major obstacle to listening is a common tendency to filter and judge others' talk based on pre-existing assumptions, expectations and intentions... Many people listen in a critical way, brushing off information from people they think have little to offer...With such filters in place, 'I'm listening from a kind of concrete bunker that I've built many years ago, that I'm not even conscious of,' Mr. Treasure says...
People may be getting less practice in listening. A 2006 study of college students showed they spent about 24% of their time listening to others face to face or in groups, down from 53% in 1980... Our ability to communicate face to face has decreased a lot... Mr. Treasure recommends keeping in mind an acronym, RASA—for receive, by paying attention to the person; appreciate, by making little noises such as 'hmmm' or 'oh'; summarizing what the other person said, and asking questions afterward."
Excerpt from Tuning In: Improving Your Listening Skills
There was some good news in my experience of talking less: I listened more. And listening, it turned out, was a much more productive way to achieve my speaking objectives than speaking. When I listened, I helped myself, helped others and built relationships at least as effectively as I did speaking and with much less collateral damage."
Excerpt from How to Speak More Strategically
"Talking about ourselves - whether in a personal conversation or through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter - triggers the same sensation of pleasure in the brain as food or money...
About 40% of everyday speech is devoted to telling others about what we feel or think. Now, through five brain imaging and behavioral experiments, Harvard University neuroscientists have uncovered the reason: It feels so rewarding, at the level of brain cells and synapses, that we can't help sharing our thoughts. We love when other people listen to us."
Excerpt from Science Reveals Why We Brag So Much
TED Talk by Julian Treasure: How to speak so that people want to listen
Excerpt from Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White
Theodore B Olson: "We're trying to start a trend that would involve people actually listening to somebody who has a different opinion."
Excerpt from The Colbert Report
Listen by Urban Confessional
"Never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don't share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise." - Colin Powell
"Encouraging civil discussion of alternative views genuinely benefits society as a whole." - John Stuart Mill
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway
"Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak." - Bible, James 1:19
"The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak." - Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." - Jimi Hendrix
"Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering." - Margaret J. Wheatley
"Do not say you agree or disagree until you can say 'I understand.'" - Mortimer J. Adler
"A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with." - Kenneth A. Wells
"One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say." - Bryant H. McGill
"If you have the strength to speak, you should have the courage to listen." - Nishan Panwar
"Ironically, one of the best ways to win people's confidence is simply to let them talk first. If you want to establish trust, let the other person speak first or have the floor first." - Inc
"The failure to listen well not only prolongs meetings and discussions but also can hurt relationships and damage careers." - Wall Street Journal
"Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening." - Emma Thompson
"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." - Doug Larson
"Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it." - David Hockney
"Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time." - President George W Bush
"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." - Karl A. Menninger
"The first duty of love is to listen." - Paul Tillich
"Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right." - Jane Goodall
"Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen." - Margaret J. Wheatley
"I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening." - Larry King
"Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person." - Alice Miller
"Listening is being able to be changed by the other person." - Alan Alda
"Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking." - Bernard Baruch
"It's only through listening that you learn, and I never want to stop learning." - Drew Barrymore
"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery." - Joyce Brothers
"There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us." - Margaret J. Wheatley
"The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success." - James Cash Penney
"Listen to many, speak to a few." - William Shakespeare
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." - Robert Frost
"When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen." - Stephen Covey
"We have two ears and one mouth so we should listen more than we speak." - Diogenes
"Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly." - Plutarch
"There is only one rule for being a good talker - learn to listen." - Christopher Morley
"Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize." - Warren Farrell
"You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - M. Scott Peck
"Keeping your mind open to what other people think, even if you disagree, is an element of leadership - not just talking but listening." - President George H W Bush
"You get nothing done if you don't listen to each other." - First Lady Barbara Bush
"It has been my experience that if we make the effort to listen to people when we meet them, and work to get to know them a little, it is then easy to find something likable in practically anyone." - Bryant H. McGill
"It takes a great man to be a good listener." - Calvin Coolidge
"The humble listen to their brothers and sisters because they assume they have something to learn. They are open to correction, and they become wiser through it." - Thomas Dubay
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." - Peter F. Drucker
"Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively." - Carl Rogers
"Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions." - Lee Iacocca
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood." - Stephen R. Covey
"Just being available and attentive is a great way to use listening as a management tool." - Nicholas V. Luppa
"Of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable—and one of the least understood. Most captains of industry listen only sometimes, and they remain ordinary leaders. But a few, the great ones, never stop listening." - Peter Nulty
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something." - Wilson Mizner
"You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen—not just money, but respect." - Harvey Mackay
"To learn through listening, practice it naively and actively. Naively means that you listen openly, ready to learn something, as opposed to listening defensively, ready to rebut. Listening actively means you acknowledge what you heard and act accordingly." - Betsy Sanders
"To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble." - Frank Tyger
"It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
"As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things." - Po Bronson
"My parents taught me how to listen to everybody before I made up my own mind. When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge-and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time." - Steven Spielberg
"To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation." - Chinese Proverb
"You never get people's fuller attention than when you're listening to them." - Robert Brault
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." - Peter F. Drucker
"Silent" and "listen" are spelled with the same letters." - Unknown
"The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention." - Thich Nhat Hanh
"If you want to be heard, listen." - Melchor Lim
"Sometimes your eyes don't open until your mouth closes." - Keion Henderson
"Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference." - David Augsberg
"Consider carefully how you listen." - Bible, Luke 8:18
"A wise man will hear and increase learning." - Bible, Proverbs 1:5
"To answer before listening-- that is folly and shame." - Bible, Proverbs 18:13
"A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion." - Bible, Proverbs 18:2
"An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again." - M. Scott Peck, MD
"In our public discourse, it's become increasingly common to vilify those with whom you disagree... We all have a lot to gain by talking to each other, even if at the end of our talking we still disagree... Janna helped me slow down and really listen what people were saying to me. People want you to hear what they think. Listen to them, really consider what they are saying to you, especially if they disagree with you. The more I listened, the more I learned from and about the people I represent... How do you care? Same as in the rest of life: by being there, showing up and listening, instead of just talking... The only way to generate respect and a better understanding of motives and ideas is to keep visiting and talking and opening the lines of communication... If we can move beyond the name calling and recriminations, we can find common ground and work together. Just by listening, we can learn a lot." - Congressman Paul Ryan
Contribute to the On Listening page by emailing LFP@ListenFirstProject.org
