Communication is complete only when it is registered by the receiver!

As it is, humans are known to be bad listeners. We are so occupied with saying our piece that our ears are perennially switched off. So we have this lovely scenario where everyone is yapping away but there is little or no attempt to ensure that it is all registering at the other end. And this is precisely the point I wish to make.

We have acquired some very self-defeating habits. I will take up two that I feel are the worst. One is the fact that our impatience is so acute that we do not think twice to butt in a conversation and the second is that we do so without ensuring that anyone is listening to us or not. First we disturb two people at conversation and this shows the downside of our manners and then we expect to be heard first which shows the extent of our self-preoccupation. Then the worst part is that the person addressed is unable to resist the call and responds, thereby adding to the melee.

Here you are standing in front of the judge, frightened of the consequences while your lawyer is trying to make a point and the judge starts listening to some other lawyer. How would you feel under the circumstances?

We can’t sit still for a moment. With our laptops and mobile phones in hand we just have to be up and doing something. The brain and nerves are stretched out in hundreds of directions at any given time. If everyone is going a mile a minute, then who is sitting still enough to bother to listen to me? It is no secret that quite often we discuss and argue a project or subject into such a confusion that all that remains to be done is bury it.

Communications have now become incessant and we are all expected to be at our listening posts at all times. So the antidote is to shut off the process!

I give an instance from my personal life. Transpose this small incident into other areas and you will understand the magnitude of the point being made.

Yesterday, as I sat watching TV, my wife was talking to me in her usual style which means she would start saying something out of the blue and expect me to take it all in. As I listened to her, my child was playing nearby. Just then, it seems, the maid brought me a hot cup of coffee and placed it on the table within the reach of the child while I was looking away.

The child, all of 20 months old, lovingly and helpfully picked it up and started putting it in my hands – all this while I was not even aware of the coffee. As it turned out, my waving arm hit the cup and the poor child dropped the coffee in my lap. I shrieked and the child bawled in consternation. I was left nursing a burn. And God forbid if the coffee had dropped on the child. Gosh, I am scared now even to think of it. I asked the maid why she left the cup within the child’s reach without informing me. She replied that she did tell me! But I was so engrossed in listening to my wife that I did not register what she said.

She knew well that I had not heard and yet she did not try to ensure that I was made aware of the hot cup at my elbow. She said in all honesty that the possibility of a mishap did not enter her mind. So that was that.

The solution? Simple. First attract the person’s attention, then, when certain, then alone speak to him/her directly with eyes meeting. And for good manners’ sake please wait for your turn.

Pradeep Maheshwari is a Delhi-based author, personal growth trainer and marketing consultant.