If everybody’s talking, who’s listening?

Just read an interesting article – online of course – in Wall Street Journal about the end of the e-mail era, to be replaced with more instant, one-to-many ways of communicating, such as Twitter, Yammer and Facebook. 

And it made me think: if all of us are Tweeting away and updating our status on Facebook with everything we’re doing – no matter how potentially uninteresting – to others, are we losing sense of real communication?  The kind that involves eye contact (yes, real eyeballs), listening (you know that old adage: why we have two ears and only one mouth) and being truly present in the moment for another human being.

Being present in the moment is, of course, one of the key coaching skills – which is why I’m interested in it.  And through my coaching practice, I’ve found that skill the most elusive.  How many times – as coaches, or just plain friends or colleagues or acquaintances – do we really listen, and pay attention to someone else’s journey?  And how often do we mentally compose shopping lists (at worst) or imagine answers (based on our own experiences) before the person has even finished talking?

And I am afraid that the prevalence of data – information, if you like – constantly being streamed at us, will only make us – as humans – lose that listening touch even more.  How easy is it to not really listen when all we’re hearing is somebody’s hastily written updates on what they’ve just seen, thought or done.  If they haven’t paid much attention to living the experience in the moment, and only sharing it with the select few, why are we obliged to listen, and take them seriously?  So we could all, potentially, end up with lots of streamed moments of experience without much meaning, reflection or learning.  And it could blur the boundaries between acting and experiencing, resulting in all of us shouting at the top of our voices, with no individual voice being truly heard.

(link to article here, if you’re interested http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html?mod=rss_US_News)