Many communicators try to make themselves look smart
Page 158. Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audience feel smart. They help people approach their own views with more humility, doubt and curiosity.
— from Communication & Conflict (Communication/Conflict) · Think Again by Adam Grant
In the book
To hear, you must first be silent, and you must honor the pauses, because some of the most important things pass between the words rather than in them. The mark of a great listener is not that they seem clever but that they make the other person feel clever — they leave people holding their own ideas with a little more humility, doubt, and curiosity than before. Ask open-ended questions; ask questions that draw the other person out. — Communication & Conflict (Communication/Conflict)