Communication Breakdown: Opportunity to Not Listen

Any party involved in a conversation has the opportunity to not listen. Sometimes, it’s obvious when your partner is not listening. Individuals engaged in the following behaviors are not actively listening: reading the paper, browsing the Internet, texting, channel surfing, wearing headphones, playing video games. Sometimes people pretend to listen. Just because a loved one is pretending to listen does not mean that you also have to pretend that he or she is listening.

You may be the most effective communicator on the planet — a Gandhi-level communicator, a Martin Luther King Junior-level communicator — but if you are talking to a post, you are talking to a post. If the person you are talking to is not listening you are mostly talking to yourself.

Save your breath. Ask for you partner’s full attention. When you have it you’ll know. Then proceed.