Greg McKeown

In practice, they were successful three times out of 120, so 2.5%.

Now, she didn't ask the listeners their confidence level, so I've replicated this study more than once and found that listeners are as confident or more.

So you have this perception problem.

And it's not about some peripheral issue.

It is about the primary mechanism of life because nothing gets done without correct understanding between people.

So it's not nothing, it's not trivial.

And if people are massively overconfident in their ability to understand and be understood, then they just go through life ignorantly wrong.

It's the psychological, the interpersonal equivalent of everyone thinking they're above average drivers.

Their incompetence makes their incompetence invisible.

And that's what's happening with understanding is that we learn communication is the most important skill in life.

Understanding is the most important skill within that.

We learn what skills we do have for how to do that from our family of origin primarily.

And that's where it's invisible.

No one announced to us.

This is really limited communication, by the way, that you're observing here.

This is really dysfunctional, in fact, and you'll have to learn some new.

No one ever says that.

So you're just going through life invisible, taking those skills with you, taking them with you.

You become the CEO of Microsoft.

That doesn't mean you've learned better skills.