Stop, collaborate and listen.

“I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.” - Dudley Field Malone

For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Dudley Field Malone was an attorney, politician, liberal activist and actor. If you have heard of him, then I would like to congratulate you for utilizing the wonderful world of Wikipedia. Don’t pretend you didn’t.

While his name may not register, I would assume that like me, the quote itself may have struck a chord with you. As individuals we all have areas in which we are very opinionated, passionate and keen to put across our point of view. In fact for some, were keen to put across an opinion regardless of the topic of conversation. I too am guilty of this as only this morning I found myself in an unnecessarily passionate debate about the working conditions of a job occupancy I no longer hold in a company I no longer work for.

The point is that while it’s fine to voice an opinion, we have to make sure that in doing so we don’t prevent ourselves from listening to an alternative point of view. We’re often so focused on ensuring our message is absorbed by everybody else that we neglect the opportunity to view things from a different standpoint. The reason I love the quote above is because it implies that whenever we communicate our own thoughts we learn absolutely nothing. We can only speak what we already know. It’s by listening to the insights of others that we are guaranteed to learn something new and ensure we can broaden our own views by knowing more about the subject in question.

At Dale Carnegie, we encourage and develop the concept of Active Listening. We coach people on not only how to absorb information we hear but how to act appropriately on it. The benefits of such a concept are far reaching and if you would like to know more, please visit our website or give us a call.

Brett Mills