“If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.”
– L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!
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“My most essential possession is a standard sized school notebook, which can be bought at any stationery shop on any high street. I carry this everywhere. And I write down all the comments that are made to me by Virgin staff and anyone else that I meet. I make notes of all telephone conversations and meetings and I draft out letters and list of telephone calls to make. Over the years I’ve worked my way through a bookcase of them. And the discipline of writing everything down ensures that I have to listen to people carefully.”
– Richard Branson, on The High Performance Podcast, Episode 258
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Taking notes is recording curiosity.
The answers to our questions are valuable, whether directed to ourselves or others.
But it is also very hard to actually listen. What if we valued the views of everyone we meet?
Valued enough to collect them in a notebook?
By writing we give words power. They exist for us to revisit when we need to. Like worshippers to a deity. I look to what has been written for answers to the big questions in life.
Rather than nodding along waiting for the other person to finish talking so I can launch into my own point of view, what if I said ‘that’s interesting, I really need to write that down.’
Everyone we communicate with can be a teacher if we allow them.
Writing is permanent listening. We have a record of answers to questions.
Sometimes we didn’t realise we were asking a question, but got just the answer we needed.
Conversations With Quotations 