listen...

Its been a while since I last wrote and I can now see why I find it difficult to discipline my 3 year old :-)
AceNgage recently celebrated its 3rd birthday and one of the biggest lessons I learnt was to keep my eyes and ears open to what Customers say as that will always keep me in sync with what they want. It goes back to what my Dad always said about how to talk less and listen more, no matter how hard I found that.
One of the biggest challenges that most of us face today is that we just dont listen enough. My colleagues in the past have even managed to blame this as a 'cultural' issue. The excuse was that people who interrupt and dont listen ,do so because they know what the speaker is getting at and dont need to listen to the rest of what he has to say !!
I recently saw a Bollywood flick where the heroine loses her eyesight in a road accident, while I will refrain from commenting on the movie, I cant help imagine how difficult it must be for someone to manage his/her day to day life without being able to see. But they manage, and they manage because they listen a lot better.
Employees are giving us signals all the time verbal and non verbal , and if we as Managers paid attention to what they were saying wouldnt be a lot more effective ?
You could stretch the idea to your personal life too, with our family , friends and pets ....