The Secret to Communication: Speak Less, Listen More

Whether at work or in society as a whole, the atmosphere is intensely tense. As a result, people are too busy—lacking the time or even the capacity to listen to what others are saying—wanting only to say what they want to say.

I stumbled upon this realization over the past couple of years. Even though I’ve mentioned my favorite games and artists, colleagues ask me about them over and over again, or simply never register them in the first place. At gatherings, people just loop through the exact same topics, and I can’t help but chuckle wryly.

I am still learning how to listen, but I’ve found it to be extraordinarily difficult. Many people can’t even manage the basics:

1. They don’t want to hear you at all; they already have a stance prepared to counter yours.
2. They listen on the surface, but nothing actually sinks in.
3. They listen, but forget everything immediately afterward, or ask irrelevant questions.
4. They genuinely listen—digesting, synthesizing, and asking meaningful follow-up questions.

What I’ve realized recently is that if something you want to share with friends takes more than a minute to say out loud, consider writing it down or recording it instead. While most people can nod along and make polite responses to fit the occasion, they probably won’t even remember what you said 30 seconds ago.

Part of this is due to the nature of spoken sound, which easily loses information. But the more fundamental reason is that most people simply don’t care to listen to you.

This also ties into how important you are to the other person; perhaps they just don’t want to invest energy into you. (Setting that scenario aside for now, let’s look at this primarily from a workplace perspective.)

Another point is that once you pass thirty, you’re no longer the young crowd. Talk too much, and you turn into a preachy know-it-all. Younger people might hesitate to interrupt out of politeness, but they couldn’t care less about your war stories or lectures. As the Japanese saying goes, “身の程わきまえろ” (know your place).

Sigh.

Flip the script, however, and everything changes. Listening is something most people are bad at, yet almost everyone craves being heard. In other words, in the workplace, the secret to successful communication is simple: speak less, listen more.

What if you’re convinced that you’re in the right? You need to consider a few scenarios:

• Knowledge and information gaps
• “I can’t be wrong”

If a cognitive or informational gap leads you to believe your answer is right, the core of communication is straightforward: align information between both parties. It is indeed common in communication that you possess critical context or information the other person doesn’t have.

Watch out for the Dunning-Kruger effect. Those with lower competence often lack metacognitive abilities, overestimating their own skill and failing to recognize their mistakes.

This is a frequent phenomenon in the workplace: if you constantly think everyone else is an idiot, perhaps you are the idiot. The Dunning-Kruger effect is notoriously hard to recognize in oneself; you can only counter it by paying close attention to your surroundings and being deliberate about the information you consume.

Of course, sometimes everyone else really is an idiot. If that’s consistently your observation, there’s no need to stay grinding in your current workplace. Move somewhere with more smart people, or start your own business as the boss. If your judgment is truly as sharp as you think, business should be booming.

I’ll discuss “I can’t be wrong” in a later section.

Listening

I divide listening into two levels: comprehension and empathy.

Empathy is the hardest, yet the highest level of communication. Usually, only after empathy is established do we genuinely open up to hearing each other’s viewpoints. For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume a healthy workplace where everyone is striving to deliver a better product.

In software development, debates over frameworks, system architecture, or feature implementations are common. When opinions clash, how are they typically resolved? I frequently see a few patterns:

• Both sides insist they are right, neither willing to yield
• Compromising under the pressure of authority

Even as an experienced lead or manager, if you know a design is doomed to fail and simply hand down the solution, it’s rarely effective communication. The other person is likely to perceive it as pulling rank or showing off.

Instead, you can guide them toward the right direction step by step through understanding and questioning:

“I think your design is great—how did you plan this out initially?”

“You took permissions into account here, which is fantastic.”

“Wait, if this design faces high-throughput read/write traffic, could the database get hammered and take the whole system down?”

“What happens if this asynchronous process fails?”

“I’m curious: what’s the time complexity of this implementation?”

By asking questions, you guide them toward your desired outcome, ideally allowing them to reach the solution and feel, “I figured this out on my own.” Communication is only meaningful when you fully understand the other person without preconceived assumptions.

The purpose of listening is to achieve the best outcome. For that best outcome, I don’t insist on my way, I don’t care who gets the credit, and I don’t care about being proven wrong.

Reaching this mindset is when you truly grasp the essence of communication.

”I Can’t Be Wrong”

This is a mindset many developers fall into when struggling to let their guard down or fearing embarrassment. In these situations, “right or wrong” no longer matters; the issue has shifted entirely to defending their ego.

For many developers, admitting a mistake is equated with admitting they’re stupid or that they’ve failed.

To protect their self-esteem, they subconsciously push back against any hint that they might be wrong. A fear of making mistakes is also a symptom of insecurity—they cling to absolute control over certain domains.

The key to continuous growth is recognizing that you will make mistakes, and treating them as invaluable opportunities to learn.

When it comes to mistakes in my development career, I’ve made too many to count. But that’s precisely how I accumulated a wealth of experience and learned what to do next time. Many renowned developers have shared on various occasions that they, too, make mistakes all the time.

Some might push back with the argument: “So are you saying it’s okay to make mistakes?” But in development and projects, errors are inevitable; without context, it’s hard to make sweeping generalizations. It all comes down to whether you’re willing to own the consequences.

Especially in an era where AI is rapidly evolving, much of our past experience may become obsolete today. Sometimes, the perspectives offered by younger developers turn out to be the superior solution—much like in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, where for Fern, ordinary offensive magic is something second nature and ingrained in her very bones.

Only by letting go of the obsession with being right can you achieve the best outcome.

(We are all reasonable people here, so please don’t misinterpret this as “do sloppy work because mistakes happen anyway.”)

Fact or Opinion

There is no right or wrong when it comes to stances and values. More often than not, what we argue about isn’t a “fact” with a definitive answer, but rather a subjective “opinion.”

One of the main sources of conflict in communication is conflating facts with opinions:

• Fact: “This coffee is 90°C.”
• Opinion: “This coffee is too hot and tastes bad.”

Many people defend their “opinions” as if they were indisputable “facts.”

Once a conversation touches someone’s core values, it ceases to be a debate of logic.

These beliefs are deeply intertwined with their personal identity; challenging their view feels like an attack on who they are. In such scenarios, reaching a verdict of “right” or “wrong” is virtually impossible—there are only differences in perspective.

Conclusion

A metric I find particularly useful is: how often are you genuinely curious about what others think?

If you are frequently curious about how others think, you’ve likely mastered the essence of communication. If you constantly feel that others are idiots and that only your solution is correct, chances are you still haven’t learned how to communicate.