Have you ever noticed that? 50% of all Hollywood movies would be exactly 5 minutes long if people talked to each other. In real life, it’s not that bad, or is it?

The title of this post is a quote…. by me. Somehow it crept into my seminars. I always use it when my participants construct far too complicated thoughts instead of simply talking to someone, asking questions or expressing their own ideas. What can happen?

Nevertheless, it is a huge topic not to talk to each other. So much prevents people from doing it: Inhibitions to do something wrong or prejudices about the reaction of the other? But many don’t even get the idea that they could just talk to someone. 

Instead, they try to solve complicated problems on their own. This sometimes results in a real jibber jabber: “I would like to do the training. But we can’t do that in our company anyway. Our bosses certainly don’t allow that. In any case, I have never experienced anyone…” I’ll save you from the rest. 

In Hollywood movies the whole thing is intensified by standard dialogues: “It’s not what it looks like.” “I don’t want to know. You hurt me too much.” “But let me explain.” But then she disappeared through the door. In this example there is yet another problem: He would talk about what really happened. But she is so biased that she doesn’t even want to listen. In the movies usually it’s not as she thought but the plot rides on it for at least 45 of the 120 minutes.  You notice I’ve seen a bunch of bad movies. 

But what can we learn from that? Listening could also be worthwhile sometimes. Even if you had the feeling that you already know what the other person wanted to say. Even if you think that you are right. “Talking with people” means being open to a topic, hearing it anew and really understanding the way the other person thinks. The worst case is that nothing changes. The best szenario would be to get closer to each other – professionally, of course. 

Obviously one could also talk too much. And to prevent that from happening in this blog post, I will stop now. Bye and see you soon.