Listen Up or Lose Out

3

A Good Listener Is a Rare Find

Most people spend far more time learning to hit a ball or dance or swim than they do learning how to avoid getting their lives fouled up through discommunication.

—PHILIP LESLY

IN THE LAST hundred years, the importance of listening in most jobs soared from relatively insignificant to indispensable. As explained in Chapter 2, early in the twentieth century, most nonagricultural workers labored in noisy factories where it was difficult to communicate above the clatter of machinery. However, due to the simple, repetitive ...