Listening is good business

Recently I sat quietly on a conference call and witnessed a public relations firm lose an account with a client of mine.

The client was very clear in her concerns and requests, yet the folks on the other end of the line just didn't seem to get it. They barreled forward with ideas and apologies and, being a public relations firm (no offense to my esteemed PR colleagues) did a lot of talking. What the client wanted was to be heard. By the time the call was over, so was the account.

And Listening for a Change was born.

I've been talking about launching this initiative for at least a year, but this one incident was the tipping point that launched me into cyberspace and, hopefully, connect with other listening fans and those who might want to give it a try.

So what is it about listening that makes it so rare, so hard to master, so difficult to find in this Age of Communication? Certainly we're spending enough money to be heard....the telecom industry, despite its challenges, is raking in billions of consumer dollars to keep us connected.

(And, apparently doing a good job of getting heard themselves--Telecommunications companies spent $60.3 million on political contributions over six years and a minimum of $83.4 million on lobbying over two years, according to a 2005 Center for Public Integrity analysis.)

But, I digress. Apparently we're hungry to be heard. But is anyone really listening? Certainly the majority of us have ears that work pretty well--though listening is not limited to all things audio. Nevertheless our appetite to be heard isn't being met by the fast food communications diet of our culture. Listening seems to be a little like healthy eating: we know about the food pyramid, but it's just so much easier to drive through.

What if we learned to listen, really listen, to each other. It takes a effort, to stop, be present, be curious, to actually BE with people. It might sound touchy-feely as a business strategy, but what do you have to lose? Maybe that key account...

More later. ..