Listening In Business Quotes & Sayings

It was always remarkable to me how ignorant the labels were of the listening habits of their own customers, and how obstinate they were in denying those habits and then trying to essentially alter those habits instead of retooling their business to adapt to them. — Todd Rundgren

Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington. — John Boehner

At a small dinner with other business executives, the guest of honor spoke the entire time without taking a breath. This meant that the only way to ask a question or make an observation was to interrupt. Three or four men jumped in, and the guest politely answered their questions before resuming his lecture. At one point, I tried to add something to the conversation and he barked, "Let me finish! You people are not good at listening!" Eventually, a few more men interjected and he allowed it. Then the only other female executive at the dinner decided to speak up
and he did it again! He chastised her for interrupting. After the meal, one of the male CEOs pulled me aside to say that he had noticed that only the women had been silenced. He told me he empathized, because as a Hispanic, he has been treated like this many times. — Sheryl Sandberg

role has changed, from telling the world what their business is about to listening to what our customers are saying about us, — Anonymous

...innocence is not safe in a civilization like ours, where a man must practice a 'ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness' in order to defend himself against traps. This 'ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness' is not confined to business men, but exists everywhere. We all exercise it. I know I do, and I should be surprised if you, who are listening to me, didn't. All we can do (and Melville gives us this hint) is to exercise it consciously, as Captain Vere did. It is unconscious distrustfulness that corrodes the heart and destroys the heart's insight, and prevents it from saluting goodness. — E. M. Forster

All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway. — Samuel Beckett

Drop Activities that Zap your Energy. Let your feelings be your guide. If you're feeling resentful by investing time with a networking group where you aren't getting referrals (and you're always giving them) or spending time listening to colleagues complain, your feelings may be telling you it's time to move on. It's amazing what opens up for you when you let go of an activity or a relationship that no longer energizes you. — Lisa A. Mininni

I find on songwriting, I really have to work at making sure I'm not imitating myself. You know? Which happens to all of us. When an artist becomes really famous, you'll start listening to songs and saying "Wait ... I've heard that before" and it'll be one of theirs. We all fall into that rut. If you don't have something to force you out of it, then it's kind of a dangerous business. — Andy Wilkinson

Never Underestimate. Just as in any other negotiation, watching before acting is as important as listening before speaking. It's doubly important in China, however, where customs are time-honored and breaches of protocol not so quickly forgiven. — Irl M. Davis

Make a concise statement clearly and you should only need to say it once. — Mary Mihalic

I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind ... Are you listening to me?"
Yes."
You could tell he was trying to concentrate and all.
It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you know what I'm driving at, at all? — J.D. Salinger

To launch a business means successfully solving problems. Solving problems means listening. — Richard Branson

Listening is just as important in one's home life as in the world of business. — Dale Carnegie

Franklin was the best known of the Founding Fathers. His death could not go without some sort of official notice. The House of Representatives, after listening to a brief tribute by James Madison, voted to wear badges of mourning for two months and then got on with business. — Edmund Morgan

I learned in the computer game business early on that all senses are not equal. The best example is, you're listening to a radio play and you're driving down the road, and suddenly you realize you haven't seen the road in five minutes. It's because your visual cortex has been partying with your imagination, basically. — Brenda Laurel

Punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. — Moby

At home, we're listening to TV or playing with our computers, so our entertaining is rusting. We don't know how to be good hosts and guests in business situations. — Letitia Baldrige

Day One, Morning The Dempsey Penthouse, New York On the morning the ships came, Meyer Dempsey found himself preoccupied with drugs, sex, and business. It would have been hard to believe that just six days later, only one of the three would seem to matter. "You're not listening to me, Heather," he said into the phone. "I'm going to be in LA from Friday to Tuesday. I've already booked time with the studio on Monday. The whole reason I'm coming early is - " Heather cut him off, probably to feed her need for a zinger more than a reply that couldn't wait. Heather was always "on," never really able to take a break and just be a person for once. It was one of the reasons they hadn't been able to stay married. It was like living with a jester. "Because you want to do the Walk — Sean Platt

Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult about "business," with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them. Was there ever, since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any "business" accomplished in these circumstances? — Thomas Carlyle

I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions. — Lee Iacocca

Like all soul singers, I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul. — Daryl Hall

Etiquette is what you are doing and saying when people are looking and listening. What you are thinking is your business. — Virginia Cary Hudson

If you do not believe that listening to the best people in the business telling you what they know will help you succeed, then you have allowed your ego and arrogance to get the best of you. — Andy Albright

But she wasn't really listening, because underneath it all ran the fear that it had nothing to do with good fortune, that he had earned this, and she resented him because she could have done it, too, if she'd applied herself properly, become a lawyer, moved to Canada, run a business, and what she saw when she looked at Richard was not his success but her own failure. — Mark Haddon

In a leadership role in Iraq and in running my own business, what I've learned is if you don't listen, you're going to strike out. You're going to fail miserably. The people you work with have got to know you're engaged and you're listening. — Brad Wenstrup

When I was a kid watching comedians on TV and listening to their records they were the only ones that could make it all seem okay. They seemed to cut through the bullshit and disarm fears and horror by being clever and funny. I don't think I could have survived my childhood without watching stand-up comics. When I started doing comedy I didn't understand show business. I just wanted to be a comedian. Now, after twenty-five years of doing stand-up and the last two years of having long conversations with over two hundred comics I can honestly say they are some of the most thoughtful, philosophical, open-minded, sensitive, insightful, talented, self-centred, neurotic, compulsive, angry, fucked-up, sweet, creative people in the world. — Marc Maron

... she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and robbed of colour, she saw things truly ... Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested ... and so, giving herself the little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking - one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a newspaper ... life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea. — Virginia Woolf

You cannot sell a man who isn't listening; word of mouth is the best medium of all; and dullness won't sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance. — William Bernbach

If you're not listening, you're not learning. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Mom sez I like talk radio, teaching, and consulting 'cuz they ensure captive audiences. True or not (let Freudians decide), I'm driven by a "four eyed" mission to inform, instruct, intrigue, and inspire. Moreover, I like interactivity: If you're listening, I'm listening. Talk with me! — Lisa Tolliver

We are not going to allow to a dictator who is sitting on us to determine the means of confrontation against him. We are not asking his approval to be free. I hope Robert Mugabe, a sick and old man, you are listening. We mean business. — Arthur Mutambara

You shouldn't spend your time listening to the advice of
people who have never done what you want to do. You
should never get fitness tips from an over-weight trainer,
business tips from your broke Uncle Jim, or marital tips from
someone who has been divorced three times. If you think like a successful entrepreneur and do what a successful entrepreneur does wouldn't you become successful? If you only get your advice from some college professor or academic who has never achieved business or financial success, isn't it likely that you will never achieve success as well? My friend you need to listen to a successful entrepreneur. — Clay Clark

I remember listening to an interview with Beyonce and she talked about how she and her husband, Jay-Z, have always made it a point to have the conversation about them be about their music, not about their business, not about their personal business. — Jennifer Lopez

There was once a merchant. An eager, industrious young man. His business ... required him to rise early and thus to bed early. But one evening ... he stayed awake past his usual hour ... and in so doing he heard the wondrous singing of something he'd never heard before: a nightbird. The next night, he managed to stay awake later ... to hear more of the bird's song. And the following night. He became so ... so intoxicated with the nightbird's voice that he thought only of it during the day. Came the time when he spent all the night listening to that song. Could not carry out his business during the sunlit hours. Soon he turned his back altogether on the day, and gave himself over to the nightbird's beautiful voice ... much to the sad end of his career, his health ... eventually his life. — Anonymous