Inside Your Customer's Imagination

CHAPTER 1

Practice Eccentric Listening

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

—KARL A. MENNINGER

“But you aren’t listening to me!” The words ricocheted out of the conference room and down the hall, seeping into every cubicle on the floor. And it tactlessly lassoed everyone in earshot into involuntary eavesdropping.

“What do you mean?” the other side of the confrontation responded in his own defense. “I have been listening to you throughout our whole meeting.” It was a design meeting between an engineer and a key customer. The decibel level of their contest suddenly went hushed and died after the ...