Training Blog

September 9, 2009 – The Huffington Post – New York, NY, USA

Have you noticed that the pace of our society seems to get faster all the time? People report having less in-depth, meaningful conversations, yet have more breadth of connection–more “contacts” in their online Rolodex. Twitter, Facebook and other new media tools have given us the ability to connect at an unprecedented level in terms of quantity of connections. More books on how to use these tools for networking are flooding the marketplace to join the already countless books on how to increase your bottom line with more goals, techniques, and action-oriented steps.

Could these new media tools and productivity philosophies be compromising our ability to be present with people? We may have thousands of Twitter “followers”, a few hundred Facebook “friends”, an ever-growing to-do list that we keep up with, and our goals categorized by long-term, short-term, and immediate. These accomplishments can give us a somewhat distorted sense of success.

Certainly these tools can be an aid to business and personal connection, but where can we find help to balance these action-oriented suggestions? We don’t want to fall into the trap of being too busy “doing” and forget the other part of communication: being present, listening, caring.

Dr. Mark Goulston’s Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone is the perfect book to bring back balance when focusing on productivity and efficiency has compromised the quality of your business or personal relationships.

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