Quotes About Listening

Here's a lesson for you, Sonny: Don't write if you can talk, don' talk if you can nod your head, don't nod if you don't have to

I'm blessed with a good pair of ears. That's how I fooled my piano teacher. I'd watch his fingers and I'd listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.

Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices.

Meditation is listening to the Divine within.

But the less one thinks of self's opinions, and the better listener one becomes, greater may be the opportunities for being of help or benefit to those about the entity.

I'm sorry for him who cannot hear what the tall trees have to say.

Empathy One is to listen for and be curious about the actual situation or problem that the client is describing.

Empathy One is to listen for and be curious about the actual situation or problem that the client is describing. Empathy Two is to listen for and be curious about what is really bothering the speaker as she is explaining the problem or the situation.

Ultimately the purpose of Humble Inquiry is to build relationships that lead to trust which, in turn, leads to better communication and collaboration.

What we choose to ask, when we ask, what our underlying attitude is as we ask—all are key to relationship building, to communication, and to task performance.

and Tell" and argue that not only do we value telling more than

Humble Inquiry is the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.

Humble Inquiry is the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in another person.

The Humble Inquiry attitude does not require that humility be a major personality trait of a good inquirer. But even the most confident or arrogant among us will find ourselves humbled by the reality of being dependent on others, and by the sheer complexity of trying to figure out what is important and what is not. We can think of this as Here-and-now Humility, accepting our dependence on each for information sharing and task completion.

The paradox is that the main inhibitor of useful telling is often our own failure to inquire in a way that makes it safe for others to tell us the truth, or at least to share all of what they know.

Doctors engage patients in one-way conversations in which they ask only enough questions to make a diagnosis and sometimes make misdiagnoses because they don't ask enough questions before they begin to tell patients what they should do.

The answer runs counter to some important aspects of U.S. culture— we must become better at asking and do less telling in a culture that overvalues telling. It has always bothered me how even ordinary conversations tend to be defined by what we tell rather than by what we ask.

1) Learn to see, feel, and curb the impulses to lash out; (2) Learn to make a habit of listening and figuring out what is going on before taking action; and (3) Try harder to hear, to understand, and acknowledge what others are trying to express to you.

Humble Inquiry is the skill and the art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.

We also know how important telling is from our desire in most conversations to get to the point. When we are listening to someone and don't see where it is going, we ask, "So what is your point?" We expect conversations to get to a conclusion, which is reached by telling something, not by asking more open-ended questions.

Humble Inquiry works only if the attitude behind it includes the desire to really hear what the other person says, to develop an appropriate level of empathy, and to choose a response that shows interest and curiosity.

The key to Humble Inquiry is to recognize when you need to know why something is happening instead of giving in to a knee-jerk impulse that not only keeps you ignorant but also creates an avoidable disconnect.

Learn to see, feel, and curb the impulses to lash out; (2) Learn to make a habit of listening and figuring out what is going on before taking action; and (3) Try harder to hear, to understand, and acknowledge what others are trying to express to you.