Listening with the eyes...

I heard something interesting the other day. Only 17% of our communication is verbal - meaning what we speak or hear others speak in words. Around 35% is tonal - meaning the words are not as important as the tone of voice in which they were said - and the tone is twice as important as what we are saying. But around 58% of our communication is body language - meaning what our body language says is almost four times as obvious as the words we speak. 

Which brings us to the point of how we read people? Most of the time I see people paying 100% attention to what someone is saying without really paying any attention to how it was said. Then, when the words don't measure up, they get perturbed why it happened. They should have understood in the first place that the words are not going to get honoured. Thus, it is very important to learn to listen with our eyes as much as we need to listen through our ears. Sometimes that will speak so loud, you won't need to hear what they say.