Asians are not well-known for being outspoken except for a small group of people. For most Asians, we prefer to remain quiet especially when it comes to discussions and meetings. But that’s not the only issue here. It seems like Asians are pretty bad when it comes to listening too!

Some people love to interrupt others in a conversation –>> poor listening skill.

And some people are there to listen, but only physically and not mentally –>> poor listening skill.

It seems like the longer I work in the hectic and stressful corporate world, the more I find people with poor listening skill. There are times when a peaceful team meeting ends up as a war (minus the flying chairs and maybe gunshots) just because there are more than 1 person talking and everyone wants to prove his/her point…. aka, forcing his/her point into the other person’s mind. It’s not pleasant and can be very frustrating at times (and it’s darn noisy too).

In my opinion, everyone should really learn to listen properly. When someone is talking, be there physically and mentally. Pay attention. The person could be your boss, your colleague, your parents, siblings, friends, etc. Whenever they talk, LISTEN. Don’t just stay there for the sake of staying there. Pretending to listen is as sinful as ignoring the person directly. If you cannot concentrate, just ask the person to repeat or pause for a moment but do remember you will only get few opportunities to do so…before becoming annoying.

Also, give others the opportunity to finish their sentence. Never ever finish a sentence for someone. It’s very rude. I understand that sometimes, we tend to get a lot of questions and ideas while someone is talking and we just want to speak out before we forget about them. Well, what you can do is to write down those ideas and questions in a piece of paper. And ask them or speak out AFTER the person has finished talking. Or at the very least, when the person pauses for a moment (this works for people who can talk non-stop).

Seriously, it’s not that difficult right? I personally feel that at the end of the day, everyone should be given a chance to speak and to finish their sentences. And as the listener, we should always respect the speaker. You would not want someone to finish your sentences for you, would you?

Last but not least, if you’re facing someone who just talk non-stop and you’re getting irritated, feel free to say “excuse me, i need to go to the restroom”. Do that before your mind becomes over-cluttered with BS. Oh, but if you’re the chairperson, feel free to exercise your authority.

p/s…. by the way, i just realized i wrote a similar article before this…albeit the shorter version. you can find it here – Talk less, listen more. Sorry for the redundancy. Only realized it after finishing the article. LOL. I’m getting old and my memory don serve me well anymore. crap.

p/s…. a lot of people claim that being outspoken is a difficult skill. I feel that listening skill is much harder…. and surprisingly, a lot of people cannot listen well (even those at the top of the corporate ladder cannot).

p/s…. there’s this thing called Toastmaster and they train you on speaking skill. Perhaps they should train people on listening skill as well since I feel listening is more important than speaking.