#27 The Culture of Listening
2009During a television interview, one of Italy’s leading cultural commentators Giovanni Sartori said ”these are certainly talkative times”.
This is an important statement and certainly cannot be denied, if we look at the huge number of talk shows, conventions, discussions, debates, forums and confessions by celebrities (usually the kind who ought to keep quiet). Everyone wants to talk and have their say at every available opportunity. Just how much all this chattering stimulates our sense of listening has yet to be proved, however. It seems as though the river of words, rather than creating a gentle wave of sound that reaches our ears and then our brains, has become a violent hurricane from which we want to flee as far as possible – something that is rather difficult to do, considering that this is the age of global communications. In fact, it is impossible. Our ears are channels, bringing external sound inside – an unstoppable process for anyone blessed with the sense of hearing. In an interview with illywords, Elyse S. Sussman, associate professor from the Department of Neurosciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx (New York) said that: “we can close our eyes to rest from visual stimulation, but we can’t close our ears”, adding “In actual fact we listen more with our mind than with our ears. What is at stake is the need to give meaning to what we perceive”.
Let’s start with this concept as we present this new edition of illywords: the thing that makes people listen is not the amount we talk, but what we say. Listening is the basic principle behind our sense of criticism, the sense that allows us to judge whether the person we are talking to is worth listening to or not.
After all, our real asset is the ability to talk about ourselves, our experiences and thoughts. The same applies in our social and professional lives. So many companies and institutions have so little to say that they are forced to invent pompous slogans to capture our attention. But if the content is interesting (and most importantly, genuine), that should be all we need to reach our public. As confirmed by Claudio Ondoli, an expert in training from the School of Business Management at Bocconi University, Milan: ”taking the time to listen allows me to tap into the complexity, change-related tension and the abundance of knowledge which exists in organisations, in order to bring effective procedures and projects to life”.
We could say that knowing how to listen is a form of respect – a skill we should practise more often and invest in more heavily. It’s something we can start doing right now.
During a television interview, one of Italy’s leading cultural commentators Giovanni Sartori said ”these are certainly talkative times”.
This is an important statement and certainly cannot be denied, if we look at the huge number of talk shows, conventions, discussions, debates, forums and confessions by celebrities (usually the kind who ought to keep quiet). Everyone wants to talk and have their say at every available opportunity. Just how much all this chattering stimulates our sense of listening has yet to be proved, however. It seems as though the river of words, rather than creating a gentle wave of sound that reaches our ears and then our brains, has become a violent hurricane from which we want to flee as far as possible – something that is rather difficult to do, considering that this is the age of global communications. In fact, it is impossible. Our ears are channels, bringing external sound inside – an unstoppable process for anyone blessed with the sense of hearing. In an interview with illywords, Elyse S. Sussman, associate professor from the Department of Neurosciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx (New York) said that: “we can close our eyes to rest from visual stimulation, but we can’t close our ears”, adding “In actual fact we listen more with our mind than with our ears. What is at stake is the need to give meaning to what we perceive”.
Let’s start with this concept as we present this new edition of illywords: the thing that makes people listen is not the amount we talk, but what we say. Listening is the basic principle behind our sense of criticism, the sense that allows us to judge whether the person we are talking to is worth listening to or not.
After all, our real asset is the ability to talk about ourselves, our experiences and thoughts. The same applies in our social and professional lives. So many companies and institutions have so little to say that they are forced to invent pompous slogans to capture our attention. But if the content is interesting (and most importantly, genuine), that should be all we need to reach our public. As confirmed by Claudio Ondoli, an expert in training from the School of Business Management at Bocconi University, Milan: ”taking the time to listen allows me to tap into the complexity, change-related tension and the abundance of knowledge which exists in organisations, in order to bring effective procedures and projects to life”.
We could say that knowing how to listen is a form of respect – a skill we should practise more often and invest in more heavily. It’s something we can start doing right now.
The meaning of colour evolves in parallel with culture.