![]() Though, a manager’s most important role is to “give the quiet ones a voice.” And great managers create an atmosphere of psychological safety, where people are more likely to share information and ideas without fear of being talked over or dismissed. But employees tend to resist and resent any suggestion that they might have “issues.” Employers also sometimes bring in career coaches and business psychologists to help employees listen better. Some employers have added sections on “active listening” to their employee handbooks, but the concept tends to be vaguely or inaccurately defined. They are countless studies and books about communication. A study published in Harvard Business Review found that during the last two decades, “the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more.” At many companies, employees can spend as much as 80 percent of their day communicating with others. Most businesses rely on teams of employees to get things done. In today’s economy, listening likely is your job. The more likely you are to click Buy Now. Indeed, the more divided your attention, the more persuadable you are. The quality of your attention doesn’t matter. Attention has become a commodity, bought and sold on sophisticated electronic exchanges where bidding occurs in real time based on data provided by your cell phone or web browser. Like it or not, we are participating in an attention economy, where advertisers pay billions to media companies to steal us away from whatever else we might want to focus on. They do it because your taps, swipes, scrolls, and clicks are how they make money. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Epic Games (the creator of the popular third-person-shooter video game Fortnite) comingle computer science, neuroscience, and psychology to develop strategies to hook you, often by playing on your social anxieties, vanity, and greed. Websites, mobile apps, video games, and social media platforms are designed to grab and keep your attention. While people often say, “I can’t talk right now,” what they really mean is “I can’t listen right now.” And for many, it seems they never get around to it. Listening is often regarded as talking’s meek counterpart, but it is actually the more powerful position in communication. Listening is the more powerful position in communication It would not make it to by top50 list, though. The book provides interesting insight about the unsung art of listening. It is mostly a structured copy-paste from Kindle notes. Below is an organized extract of You’re not listening by Kate Murphy.
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