My sister is a great listener. She is the kind of person that you can call at any hour of the day or night because she’ll be there to hear whatever you have to say. She’ll ask all of the right questions, remain engaged and never judge what you say. It’s a great trait and one that I’ve often envied since I’m a much better talker than I am a listener. But I’ve also seen how she can take the art of listening just a little bit too far. She gets overshadowed a lot by other people because she never speaks up. People know that she’s a great listener but that’s the only thing that they know about her.

I noticed this at a party that we went to a few months back. She got cornered by some guy who worked at a document imaging service. He was going on and on about his work and my sister was nodding politely. When I approached, he was droning on about how he doesn’t like his company’s networked scanning system providers. There’s nothing wrong with this except that my sister wasn’t interested in it. And more importantly, there were a bunch of artists and creative types at the party that she was interested in meeting. I rescued her and made the introductions and she had a much better time. I hope she learns to speak up a little bit more for herself in the years to come.

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