My first response to this rule was “Of course! Every single person on the planet will know something I don’t, this makes a lot of sense.” So why have I found myself listening to people as if they don’t? Stay humble.
I am the type of person that can easily block out people and focus on the task I am currently doing instead. I understand numbers and words easier than I understand people.
Once I started working in the door-to-door sales industry, I instantly found out that I wasn’t understanding people because I wasn’t paying attention to them. After all these years I finally started looking at people’s faces, their eyes, and their feet. I could actually tell what people were thinking because I was concentrating on them and attentive to their tone of voice, volume and syntax.
Even so, you don’t have to make it so complicated if you just listen with curiosity. The more you listen to the other person, the more the other person is willing to share.
If you’re the one doing the talking all the time, you don’t end up learning anything. Everything in the conversation is something you already know! So shut your mouth, let the other person talk, and see what you can learn from them.
Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
Thought Canvas 