By Silvia De Diego, member of the Baud team.
Summer evening in the village: folding river chair, jacket and blanket. The kit to spend a night in the fresh air and wait for the role of the masters in the art of conversation to begin.
Neighbors who congregate randomly, fluid talks that end naturally when one of the talkers decides to continue on their way, unpredictable jumps from one topic to another, joys and sorrows in the same intervention. An orderly, harmonious chaos.
Since we were little, some of us have had the privilege of participating as listeners of this increasingly scarce art.
If we are still lucky enough to admire it today and do it with attention, we will have the opportunity to put into practice another art that is still more obsolete, that of listening.
Because of the time we spend communicating, almost half we spend listening, but we don't always do it fully.
Rodrigo Ortiz, in the book Learning to Listen, included various types of listening. The lowest levels include everything from listening without interest, to hearing only what interests you, listening by selecting the main ideas or listening to answers directed by our questions.
The most perfect level is reached with active listening.
Active listening involves interpreting the entire message:
Non-verbal communication, silences, the intonation of our interlocutor, emotions, but also showing him that we have interpreted him correctly.
It generates trust, credibility, complicity and understanding, facilitating access to the most relevant information.
Those summer nights allowed us to exercise active listening even before we knew of its existence. A listening that we now apply with our clients when starting any project to extract what is truly relevant and differentiating from your proposals, the essence that we must find, take care of and enhance to create unique brands, but also real.