Listening and Hearing are NOT the Same Thing - put down your phone!

How many times have you been in a meeting or a conversation, and someone is looking at their phone or computer while you are talking or presenting? And you are getting this…

Mmmhmmm, yep. Yeah. I know. Mmmhmm. Wait — What? Can you repeat that?

Change your worldview. You are the person on the phone or on your computer when someone is talking to you. You are hearing them. But are you really listening?

“boy singing on microphone with pop filter” by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

We are all guilty of that. We allow distractions to take us away from the moment. Stop wasting everyone’s time. Stop being disrespectful.

Put your phone down. Close your computer. Stop talking. Hear and listen. Engage in the conversation, at that moment. Hear the person speaking and listen to their words. Process the information. Provide the proper respect and pay attention to the person speaking to you. You cannot multitask. You can not look at your phone or computer (or TV or the races, or, or, or) and hold a coherent conversation with someone unless it is drunken gibberish. If you somehow succeed, how readily are you going to remember what was said at that moment?

What was MEANT at that moment?

You meant:

You are not important enough. This is waaaay more important and interesting than what you have to say, so, I am going to pay attention to it instead of you.

Is that what you want your message to be?

Hearing (for those of us fortunate enough to have full hearing and not hearing impaired) is an activity that “just” takes place where sounds such as utterances, grunts, grumbles, and guffaws enter the ear canal and rattle around in that empty head of yours until you begin to listen.

Listening is a choice. An action where we ALLOW our brain to convert those noises into words, phrases, and sentences and process them in a manner that will elicit an emotion, action, or response.

ALLOW is the key word here. By short wiring our brains through visual stimulation from electronic devices (or other distractions that are in our line of sight), we are choosing to ALLOW the distraction to rule our ability to engage with the person you are in the presence of.

Put down the phone. Close the computer. Hear and listen to what is being said. Make sense of what is being said. Be respectful and respond in kind.

Listening does wonders:

• Saves time
• Saves energy
• It can actually save your life
• Helps you earn more respect
• Helps you earn more money
• Makes you more intelligent
• You are sexier
• The speaker perceives you are more intelligent
• It can actually get you promoted
• People will love you

What are you going to change today? What are you going to do differently right now?

Go forth and be brilliant.

enterthenecessarydistractionhere* — distractions include but are not limited to, anything from the interweb. Texts, IMs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Skype, Zoom, Slack, Teams, Outlook, Gmail, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, twitch — you name it. Photos of your dogs, cats, horses, penguins. Videos of your kids, your neighbors’ kids, your front porch.