Arianna Huffinton pointed this out at the Wisdom 2.0 conference and I’ve noticed it in one-on-one conversations, in meetings, on panel discussions: instead of truly having dialogue that is responsive to what someone else just said, we simply trade monologues.

One person says their monologue and the other person, instead of truly listening, is simply rehearsing their monologue in their head, waiting for their turn.

In communicating monologue to monologue we never get the chance to actually hear each other or to then truly deepen the conversation and move it forward.