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Transcript
People often ask me how to be a better listener. And this could be whether you’re communicating in your native language or you want to improve your ability in another language, such as English or Japanese.
The problem with communication is that an idea or thought starts in one person’s head, it turns into words, and then as it comes into our head, it gets filtered through our background, our culture, our beliefs, and our values. So that by the time it gets here [to my head], it may be quite different from how it started off.
What’s important is to ask questions, especially in the global workplace to avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
Now let me illustrate this with an example from my past.
In the 1990s, I started working in the Japanese steel industry. And I had no background knowledge in that area.
In the meetings, I would take notes of the words and expressions that I didn’t know and I would look them up in the dictionary afterwards or ask my boss.
There was this one expression that kept coming up and it really confused me: “saru ga takai.”
So “saru” in Japanese means monkey. And “takai” means high.
So what did high monkeys have to do with steel production?
I looked in the dictionary.
No help.
I asked my boss, who was very supportive, and he told me that “saru” meant sulfur.
So it referred to the high sulfur content in the coal that was being used in steel production.
Now I didn’t know this because “saru” to me meant “monkey” and the Japanese word for “sulfur” is “io.”
So I had to ask the background to understand the real meaning.
Otherwise I could’ve ended up being very confused for a long time!
So even if you’re speaking in your native language — communicating in your native language — it’s really easy for misunderstandings and misinterpretations to happen because what starts off in one person’s head can be very different by the time it’s filtered through our background, culture, beliefs, and values.
So if you want to be a better listener, ask more questions.