The Lost Art of Listening - Part 1

I once hear a story of a man who was having lunch at bistro in St Paul de Vence, a picturesque hilltown in the south of France. In his fractured French, he tried to order a bottle of beer.

Je voudrals one bouteille de biere, sil vous plait. He intoned to the waitress.

In a can? She asked.

Non, he said. En bouteille, NO..not in a can, as she said , in a bottle, he reiterated.

With her hands on her hips and a sneer on her face, the waitress repeated, "In a can!"

Now the customer was really getting mad, Not in a can, he insisted. In a bottle. En bouteille, En bouteille.

She threw her hands in a despair. Monsieur, In a Can!

All right, finally, the man said. " Have it your way, Give it to me in a can, anything. Just give me a beer.

She stormed off and returned with a bottle of Heineken. It was at that point that the customer realised that what had happened and laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair.

You see when you say Heineken and loose the h sound and it sounds like "In a Can"

These days effective listening is almost a lost art. We hear mostly what we want to hear, not what the person is trying to communicate to us. Many conflicts can be resolved easily if we learn how to listen.

The problem is that we have forgotten how to listen. We are so busy making sure that people hear what we have to say that we forget to listen. But the key to communication, negotiation, to selling, is to keep your mouth shut and truly listen to what people have to say. Your prospects will tell you everything you need to know in order to make a sale. People love talking about themselves. The hard part for you is to keep your mouth shut long enough for you to get the required information.

Recently, I got a misunderstanding from my friend maybe because I might have heard him wrongly, nearly let our relationship turned sour. Sometimes it is better to seek for clarification or rephrase what the person have said to us to make sure we heard or listen correctly. This is something I learn from my recent incident.

Remember what we got two ears and only one mouth,is to listen more and talk less. *Laugh*