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When you are interested everyone is interesting
“I think it’s interest and care. I’m interested in whoever I’m speaking to. I care.”
Keanu Reeves, on being asked what qualities define a good listener
This morning I read a wonderful interview of Keanu Reeves by Tom Lamont for The Observer. What leapt off the page for me was Tom’s own interest, care and listening deeply to what Keanu was saying and what he is all about. as in the full passage ending in the memorable quote above:
“he is a listener first, a talker second, and I recognise in him some of the tricks of the passive conversationalist. He is unsqueamish about letting a silence linger. After statements, he sometimes repeats them to himself in an undertone, as though revisiting the words for possible flaws. Whenever he is asked a question he hasn’t heard before he tends to look into the distance and think for a while before giving a short, firm, well-formed answer.
When I ask him what qualities define a good listener, Reeves stays motionless for so long I assume our Zoom connection has failed. Then he answers: “I think it’s interest and care. I’m interested in whoever I’m speaking to. I care.”
When I read that passage, my thoughts leapt back to my most recent #WhatComesNextLive conversation, with Siobhan Fitzpatrick of The Networking Hub. At 3:35 into…
