More Quotes About Listening
Gloria Steinem refers to listening as a "revolutionary act." Here's why.
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| Still Life by Rachel Ruysch, c. 1690 |
You may have noticed I'm a bit obsessed with listening here at the yak occidental. This is probably because I desperately wish I was better at this myself. Nevertheless, here is a collection of quotes on why listening is so important.
From My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
"I could see that, because the Gandhians listened, they were listened to. Because they depended on generosity, they created generosity. Because they walked a nonviolent path, they made one seem possible. This was the practical organizing wisdom they taught me:
If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them.
f you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live.
If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye."
- Gloria Steinem
"Because this book is all about stories, I hope some here might lead you to tell your own and also to get hooked on the revolutionary act of listening to others."
- Gloria Steinem, emphasis mine
"After I joined the ranks of traveling organizers-which just means being an entrepreneur of social change— I discovered the magic of people telling their own stories to groups of strangers. It's as if attentive people create a magnetic force field for stories the tellers themselves didn't know they had within them. Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak."
- Gloria Steinem, emphasis mine
From The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
"If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication."
- Stephen R. Covey
"Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives, and interpretation, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to understand. You're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul."
- Stephen R. Covey
From Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte
"The core act of leadership must be the act of making conversations real. The conversations of captaincy and leadership are the conversations that forge real relationships between an organization and the world it serves. All around these conversations, the world is still proceeding according to mercies other than our own. This is the ultimate context to our work. The cliff edge of mortality is very near [...] Everything is at stake, and everything in creation, if we are listening, is in conversation with us to tell us so."
- David Whyte
From Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy
"Listening is crucial to presence. And the challenges that arise when we really need to listen are the same ones that make it hard to be sufficiently present to do so."
- Amy Cuddy
"Real listening can't happen unless we have a sincere desire to understand what we're hearing. And that's not an easy thing to manage, because it requires us to suspend judgment - even when we're feeling frustrated or scared or impatient or bored and even when we feel threatened or anxious about what we're about to hear (because we think we know it or because we don't know it)."
- Amy Cuddy
From We Need To Talk: How to Have Conversations that Matter by Celeste Headlee
“Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. The purpose of listening is to understand, not to endorse.”-Celeste Headlee
FURTHER READING
VIDEO: The Importance of Listening at Work
Just Listen: Three Different Career Books on One Key Skill
