Recently, the Democrats in Washington, D.C. got a big surprise. The power balance shifted and they lost their super majority when Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown took the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat in the Senate. People thought that since Sen. Kennedy, a Democrat, had the seat for 46 years, Democrat Martha Coakley would be a shoe in. They were wrong.

The analysis is that people in Massachusetts, and people everywhere, are worried about the economy and they don’t feel the Democrats in Washington are really listening to them. But President Obama says they’ve got the message. They’re listening now. The key would have been to start listening sooner. But the Democrats assumed they already knew what the people wanted.

Listening is important. As one of my employees was describing what it was like to work for me, she commented on my “colorful language,” saying that, if a person can look past it, they will see someone who is fair and who cares about people. She was right.
I have often been misunderstood and mischaracterized because of my direct and “colorful” use of words, even though I have spent my life helping others. Anyone who knows me, knows this is true.

It makes me wonder why this employee, who has known me less than a month gets that and others, who have known me for years, don’t. And I have come to a simple conclusion. She listens, while others get caught up in semantics.

Semantics, put simply, is the focus on the use of words in order to make people act a certain way. When someone says they didn’t do what they were supposed to because they didn’t like how it was said, they are talking about semantics.

It happens a lot. People get lost in this word or that word. They can’t see the forest for the trees, and they miss the message. In other words, they hear, but they are not really listening. And most of the time, they are the ones who lose.

Companies lose good employees because they don’t listen to them. The U. S. Department of Labor reported that 46 percent of employees who quit their job, quit because they felt they were not being listened to and interpreted that to mean they were not appreciated. That’s not good, because any business owner will tell you that good help is hard to find.

Likewise, employees often miss opportunities for advancement and growth because they don’t really hear what their employer is trying to say to them. Many times, an employer will try to offer guidance or correct an employee, with the idea of helping that employee to grow. But because of fear or some misunderstanding, the employee will view that constructive criticism as picking on them, micro-management or some other destructive motive.

They don’t stop to think that they were hired because their services were needed and they seemed to be the best one for the job. That employer saw something in them they could develop. It is in the best interest of the employer to help that person do the best job they can for the company. It is not in the best interest of the employer to destroy that person. That’s just common sense, but sense is not common.

Because of ideas that people have when they come to the job, they misinterpret the words of their employer and develop an attitude of “us against them.” Once that mind-set settles in, they begin to listen through that filter and it creates a hostile relationship. They think they already know what their boss is really trying to say. They begin to fight the very one who is trying to help them because they are not really listening.

The same thing happens with parents and their children, in marriages and all other relationships. They are destroyed because people don’t really listen. They are not willing to put their own ideas and thoughts aside and ask the question, “What is really being said here?” They don’t go back and really think about the message. They get lost in the words.

In fact, according to statistics, we only understand about 25 percent of what we hear. Therefore, a good principle of communication is to seek to understand before seeking to be understood. It means not thinking about a response, but instead, really trying to get a clear understanding of the message. This may mean asking questions until everybody agrees on what is being said and what is really meant by it. It may also mean being quiet and going back and thinking about what is being said.

As the saying goes, we were given two ears, but only one mouth. That means we should talk less and listen twice as hard.
That also means we should listen without interrupting. When we interrupt, we are sending the message that what we are thinking is more important than anything the other person could possibly have to say right now. It can shut down communication and make a person miss what could have been important information, had that person not been interrupted.

Listening is not just a skill. It’s a choice. There is an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. That means that everyone has something to say worth listening to. We must realize that we cannot possibly have all the information we need and that what others have to share is valuable. The people around us can make us better. They can help us grow and keep us out of trouble. But they can only do that if we are willing to listen.