Why do I have to do the “Listen and Write” article first? For me, listening is the first thing you will have to do when getting to a new environment.
First time listening to the music, I bet many of you have no idea what the lyrics are. Personally, the music only comes to me the 3rd time I’m listening to it.
Listening to each word is easy, but it’s not the same to catch a sentence at once. In reality, especially in meetings and watching videos, you don’t have the luxury to listen to things twice.
With this article, I will list down all my listening faults over the past few years. But before jumping into the details, let’s ask “Why do we need to listen?”
Write anything you’ve heard down.
This was a case I had in my latest class: a 7 minute video, recorded from a group of Singaporeans. Many of you may already know, the Singaporeans are brilliant, but they speak at one of the fastest pace you could find in the modern years. I was sitting in a class of 40 people, all I did was have a big sheet in front of me, writing anything I could hear down, line by line. My writing was so ugly that I even doubted myself if I had written correctly.
Time’s up! We only had one chance to see that video, and most people got the video wrong. They only catch 1-2 keywords, then they make up all the rest.
In my turn, I opened up my sheet, then read the whole thing out loud. I was sick back then, so I was just trying to get the words out properly, I didn’t care much about other people’s expressions. When I finished, the teacher said: You got all the facts already, there’s no need for the next one. For the remainder of that class, the teacher used all the facts that I’ve pointed out from the video.
Later in that class, few people asked me how I know exactly what the leaders say? All I said was: I just listened to the video, I didn’t guess, I just wrote what I heard down. I didn’t write the words which I was unsure about. That is “Listen and Write”.
Why is “Listen and Write” important?
The Telephone Game Effect
In Vietnamese, we call this “Tam sao thất bản” (The Telephone Game Effect). It goes like this:
Five people line up. The first person gets a message and passes it down the queue to the next. By the time the last person receives it and speaks it out loud, the message is completely distorted.
Corporate communication suffers from the exact same flaw: they don’t listen and write; the more hands a message passes through, the less accurate it gets.
Misleading data leads to misdirected strategy
You cannot afford to misinterpret your boss’s core idea, or the execution will diverge by 100%. Words and metrics are delicate: dropping a single detail completely distorts the logic.
For instance, if the report says an average watch time of 2 seconds on a 30-second video, and you only write down “2 seconds average watch time”, you lose the entire benchmark needed to analyze accurately.
Harm of data manipulation
Here is another form of data manipulation that directly impacts the entire team: Sugarcoating.
In many corporate cultures, there is an unwritten rule that every message must sound “nice.” Even in a crisis, managers deliver bad news with gentle smiles to prevent panic.
Paradoxically, this is where rumor comes from. When employees aren’t given enough context, they start inventing their own facts. Sugarcoating critical performance issues only buys time, it doesn’t solve problems.
The solution is straightforward: managers must match their tone to the reality of the situation. Transparency prevents the dangerous illusion that “everything is fine” when action is urgently needed.
Why do people listen but don’t really listen?
An ego of “I have the right way to do it!”
There are a few stages of human life which shape how we listen:
In the first decade of life, a child is nurtured with food, clothes and needs within a family. As they express needs and wants, an Ego begins to form.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Ego is the idea or opinion of self, especially the feeling of one’s own importance and ability.
Ego is essential, it comes with an entity, so each human should have their own ego. A weak ego leads to insecurity and fear, as one cannot achieve anything in life.
During a working life, normally ages from 20 to 50, people are likely to divide into two types: those with weak egos and those with strong egos.
If they have weak ego, it’s easier to accept ideas, they will do exactly what they’re told in class or at work. But the problem is that their personal ideas are weak, meaning they will not actively defend their perspectives. They are ideal as working bees, but not as leaders.
For strong-ego groups, they like to speak up and express themselves. But the problem is that leadership has a hierarchy, simply put, there are Big Bosses and Middle Bosses.
In professional communication, Middle Bosses normally get the ideas from the Big Bosses, then transfer the messages to the working bees. This is where communication goes wrong. Middle Bosses also have strong egos, so they inject their own ideas into the conversation, which misleads the big direction.
If they are lucky, their way of doing it still aligns with the big idea. But if they aren’t, or if they are trying to prove themselves, the communication turns to chaos, leading to severe miscommunication at work.
This is the ultimate listening failure: Because Middle Bosses let their ego step in, they listen and filter data straight away, instead of practicing “Listen and Write” to capture and report the actual facts.
Presenters speak for too long without any highlight
This is technically the speaker’s fault, but if he was your boss, you can’t exactly shut him up.
Try to stay engaged…
When I catch myself losing patience, I offer a soft nudge: “So, are we focusing on Matter A here?” This is often the quickest way to ground your boss back to a single context.
If he still carries on with a 15-minute monologue, my next tactic is to wait until they seem to wrap up a point, then re-confirm: “So if I understand correctly, you mean…?”.
Ground your response to a Yes/No question
If you get it wrong, your boss would go ahead, say No and fix it anyway.
After doing this once or twice, any reasonable person will get the hint: “Ah, the team is losing focus. Let’s stop talking.”
Listeners are distracted because they have too many things in-hand
Again, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, “Overload is to give someone more work or problems than they can deal with.” For example, if your washing machine is overloaded, you cannot put more clothes into it, or it will just break down.
The same thing happens when you are overloaded with information. If your head is already spinning with three matters in hand, you definitely cannot process a fourth one.
This is easy to solve: just write it down, or record the session and attach the recording link to your calendar. You can listen and act on it later.
In this scenario, it is best for the listener to say “No” to receive more information at that moment. Speakers would be much more frustrated if the listener nods along while the data goes in one ear and out the other. Most speakers would gladly wait for a better time to ensure the listener actually has the mental space to absorb new issues.
Listeners just simply don’t care
If your audience stops listening, stop speaking. It’s the equivalent of talking to someone wearing noise-canceling headphones - they have tuned out and closed off to new ideas. Pushing forward is a pure waste of energy.
When listeners check out, it means the connection is lost. Rather than forcing the message through, a smart speaker pauses and re-engages them from a completely different angle.
Signs that you should stop listen
You have a headache
It doesn’t hurt you to tell the speaker: Please continue tomorrow. I am having a headache since it’s the end of the day. Please do not take it personally.
You are over-contexted
If you are informed with too much information at the same time, you will lost the ability to classify and filter data, which means, you properly won’t remember after that conversion is finished. Listening now is just a waste of time. Instead of that, you can use an AI-assistant tool to record or write that meeting down, then re-read them later when you’re more calm
You’re hungry or sleepy
If a meeting is scheduled too early and you haven’t eaten breakfast, your stomach will keep ringing. How can anyone concentrate under those conditions?
It is far better to actively pause the conversation and take 10 minutes to grab a quick bite. Once your body’s basic needs are satisfied, facts and information flow in much faster and more efficiently.
The Speaker Is Targeting You Personally (No Business Matter)
When a conversation strays away from solving business execution and turns into personal attacks or emotional venting,stop absorbing. Practice setting boundaries: Active listening is for facts, data, and action plans, not for serving as an unfiltered emotional sponge.
Sign that they are targeting you personally:
- Fewer work facts, more personal judgments: They focus on criticizing your personality or making comments about your appearance instead of discussing execution.
- They purposely gather a crowd before confronting you, turning a work discussion into a public performance.
- They bring up irrelevant past issues or unrelated personal flaws to undermine your credibility in front of others.
- Their voice goes up to ensure no one can actually hear what you are trying to say or clarify.
