Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
— Stephen R. Covey
I have been thinking about this sentence for a week. It is one of those quotes that has been worn smooth by quotation, but it still cuts when you actually slow down on it.
The cost of being a person who listens with the intent to reply is that you spend most of your conversations rehearsing instead of attending. The shape of the other person’s sentence becomes a kind of trampoline for your own. You wait for them to land so you can launch.
The alternative is to let the sentence finish. To let the silence after it sit for a beat longer than feels natural. To not have a reply ready at all, and to trust that one will arrive if it is needed.
It is harder than it sounds. It is also, I think, most of what people mean when they say someone is “a good listener.”