Everything Is For A Reason (or you're never too old to learn something new)

Being in the role of a Sales Engineer I tend to spend most days either in a car or on a train travelling to meetings to meet new customers, catch up with existing ones and mostly support the sales guys by listening out for new requirements and thinking on the fly high level approaches to solving them. It was on the way home from such a meeting I was sat on the train typing up my notes, for once I hadn't got my headphones on to drown out the background noise, and I tuned into a very animated conversation happening between some fellow commuters.

The conversation was essentially a person trying to explain some issues they were having with a collegue at work and attempting to explain these issues to their fellow traveller. The conversation had become so animated owing to the fierce competition that had sprung up between them to dominate the discussion. Whilst the first person was trying to articulate the issues they were experiencing, the second was firing solutions into the mix faster than a machine gun and the frustration was mounting from both parties.

As luck would have it, I was able to get off the train at my stop before this exchange descended into the inevitiable argument but the exchange resonated with me as it symbolised to me a problem I myself am prone to suffer from (and those around me have experienced, sorry guys, work in progress) and that problem is to know when you need to be quiet and listen and more importantly when is the correct time to speak. I remember the owner of a previous company offering the following advice to one of my colleagues:

"You have two ears and one mouth, this is because you should spend twice as much time listening as you do talking"

Obviously this wasn't the first time I'd heard this, my parents having quoted this truism to me repeatedly as a child but it was an eye-opener to hear it in a work context for the first time. While this axiom can be taken verbatum, you must also remember that whilst you have two ears and one mouth, you also have a brain! and it's this that should be used to tell you when you should listening or talking. So remember next time you are in a meeting, in a workshop or with friends in the pub, listen to what is being said, think about what is being said and then using what you have learnt from listening and thinking, then decide whether it's time to talk or not