Communication. Every company says it needs to get better at it. And every manager says his or her staff needs to get better at it. Volumes have been written on how to get better at it. But … what if communication wasn’t the problem?
It’s just as likely that the real problem is that we, as a society, stink at listening, according to the latest research.
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Here’s an example: The average U.S. adult has an attention span of about eight seconds. That alone probably doesn’t surprise you.
But this should: The average goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds.
That’s pretty sad, and it underscores just how bad humans have gotten at listening.
Wait … it gets worse
Oh, and people are getting worse. As recently as 2000, the average adult’s attention span was 12 seconds.
That means we’ve lost about 33% of our attention span since Y2K.
So not only don’t we have the attention span of a goldfish, it’s actually getting worse.
Well, we can fix that, right? Only if we’re willing to accept that we stink at listening and that we must improve.
But it doesn’t look as if we’ve accepted that. When professionals were asked whether or not they were good listeners, 96% of them said “yes.”
Oy vey.
[quote_center]Get a better picture … literally[/quote_center]
These terrifying stats were part of a very scary infographic produced by our friends over at ResourcefulManager.
And since you’re likely not going to get your employees to listen to you if you tried to share this info with them verbally, the infographic serves as a handy pass-along you can give to your employees to show them just how bad their listening skills have become — and how much it’s costing them and your business:
Source: ResourcefulManager .