Do You Hear What I Hear
During the Christmas season, we hear a song that asks how your hearing is. In the song it explains what was supposed to be heard. It wanted to clarify that we heard what the main singer heard.
There are many conversations that we have where the other party just does not pay attention, and that is where some the challenges start. We may not verify that the other person hears the point to we are trying to convey to them and that may be where frustration starts.
There are times when our spouse doesn't pay attention to us or we don't pay attention to them, and that is where some major challenges may start. We do not confirm what the other person says or what we want them to hear. How many times we may tune out when we are told that we need to take the trash out or something like that? In the same conversation, we may be told that a close friend has been diagnosed with a disease. If we do not pay attention to family, we may pay the consequences for a very long time.
There are some people that are trained to listen. Some people can diagnose a problem just by listening. I know some mechanics that can tell you exactly what is not right with your car just by listening to it, as you pull up to the garage. A doctor uses the stethoscope to listen to you heart or lungs or other parts and can tell that there is a challenge.
Do we listen or do we just hear? Do we hear a noise or know what it signifies?
Many times people will text or email something but we cannot hear the influences or sarcasm, in the writing. This is why it is better to have conversations with people. You can ask the questions to clarify what the person means, right away, instead of taking a day worth of communications to try to understand what is written.
Do we hear the words coming out of someone's mouth or do we also watch the body language that is sending us messages that are different from the words? How many times have you asked someone how they are doing and you got back the answer “fine”, and knew that their world was falling apart around them?
There are times when listening to someone may be difficult because the person may have an accent or challenge speaking and it may be frustrating for us to listen but it is that point in time that we may need to ask follow-up questions so that we know, truly know what the person is saying.
I have noticed that when there is a lot of background noise or very important information, I may need to spell things out or ask for the person on the other end to repeat it to me.
If we do not follow instructions or hear something correct, it may mean that we or others can die. When I was on Haz-Mat, we would spell the chemical. We had to make sure that we were looking up the correct information, especially when we deal with chemicals, we need to make sure that we are on our "A" game. If we mess up, we can mess up with big consequences.
In construction, if you mishear something, the error may cost millions of dollars to correct. If you take the wrong part and put it into a building, it may cause the building to fail.
If we don't verify, we may write down the wrong phone number, person's name or address where we are to pick someone up from.
You may want to take lessons on active listening but remember that an important part of conversations is not what you want to say or what you think you said but what the other person thinks that they have heard.
Do you know what I mean?
Stay safe,
Didymus McHugh
Didymus-mchugh.com
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