It reminds me of a panel in which I participated. The panel was celebrating diversity of one sort or another at my institution, and one speaker was a contemporary of MLK. He discussed the need to engage “the other side” in one’s debates.
A student from the audience asked, “But what if the other side won’t listen?”
“Keep talking!” was the response.
Well, here I really felt like I should jump in, but it would have been rude. In any case, everything I’ve learned about communication I learned from being married. When we think someone “won’t listen” (which is probably not accurate—this seems to occur whenever we think that we’re right and the other person is wrong; it has nothing to do with their listening), then we ourselves probably need to do less talking and more listening.
To do this successfully, it requires humility, and, of course, the desire to overcome one’s own bias.
Tom Breton—very good discussion.
It reminds me of a panel in which I participated. The panel was celebrating diversity of one sort or another at my institution, and one speaker was a contemporary of MLK. He discussed the need to engage “the other side” in one’s debates.
A student from the audience asked, “But what if the other side won’t listen?”
“Keep talking!” was the response.
Well, here I really felt like I should jump in, but it would have been rude. In any case, everything I’ve learned about communication I learned from being married. When we think someone “won’t listen” (which is probably not accurate—this seems to occur whenever we think that we’re right and the other person is wrong; it has nothing to do with their listening), then we ourselves probably need to do less talking and more listening.
To do this successfully, it requires humility, and, of course, the desire to overcome one’s own bias.