I’ve been meeting new people lately, work-related. And one of my pet peeves has resurfaced with a vengeance… people who don’t listen.
Not just not listening, but basically just waiting for their opportunity to jump into the conversation and talk about their angle on whatever I just raised, as if they need to talk and talk and show how cool they are. How much they know about whatever it was I said. And ultimately how little they care about what I might have had to say about it.
What’s up with that?
Are they trying to prove some kind of equal knowledge? Are they doing some one-upmanship thing? Are they just so supremely confident of their vastly interesting stories and experiences that they think I must be aching to hear about them? Do they genuinely just not give a toss about what I was going to say? Did they miss basic ‘how to have a conversation 101’ classes? Or are they just arseholes?
Surely there can’t be that many arseholes.
So my challenge to you this week is … check yourself listening. When someone starts to talk about something, don’t jump straight in with your corresponding vaguely related experience, no matter how relevant it might be. Pause, listen, make conversation. You might learn something.
Don’t be an arsehole.