Ask HN: Why don't most people listen to timid people?

10 points by diminium 13 years ago | 9 comments

I know someone who is very soft spoken, non confrontational, and super smart. Nobody listens to him even though he is usually right about things. I'm not sure why. You only need to look at his accomplishments to see this is someone you really should be listening to. It's very scary to see how smart he is if you just sit down and listen. It's also sad to hearing how low his salary compared to what he should be earning.

There are very smart people who can solve issues and give solutions to the hard problems many people have but are otherwise very timid. These are people who need to be listened to but they usually aren't. I'm not sure why. (Though, when they are listened to, a lot of interesting things happens.)

I'm definitely not as smart as he is but I noticed that people too don't listen to me unless I start making a mess of things. Even then, there's a 50/50 chance of them listening to me or sending out their attack hounds to chase me away.

_0ffh 13 years ago |

Because of the cult of extroversion and "self-confidence", which leads people to make their statements over-confident, over-loud, even over-aggressive.

A person which shares these traits significantly less than the average of the group will of course tend not to be heard.

If he doesn't speak up louder and does not insist on his points, what can he possibly have to say? :-/

beagle3 13 years ago |

That's American culture, and to a lesser extent, Western culture. It might also be Asian / Eastern culture, I do not know about that.

But it is not universal - there are subcultures that pay more attention to substance than to form. I've seen companies like that before - if you look hard, I'm sure you can find one.

CyberFonic 13 years ago |

There are exceptions. I certainly listen to such people, but prefer to talk one-on-one rather than in the hurly burly of meetings. As @_Offh points out, in many situations the loud mouths dominate the meetings but not necessarily the results.

I would like to think that the person you mention is being appreciated by their boss. They did hire him for his/her skill and knowledge in the first place. Sadly style often wins over substance. You only need to look at the many missteps by executives in our top companies for evidence.

rgbrenner 13 years ago | |

I would like to think that the person you mention is being appreciated by their boss.

Is "It's also sad to hearing how low his salary compared to what he should be earning" some new slang for appreciation that I'm too old to understand?

_delirium 13 years ago |

In some situations I think it's just because other people don't have to listen to them, so people who are overloaded with input ignore the easiest-to-ignore input. If there are five opinions, and two are non-confrontational and will probably not cause a fuss if you ignore them, the path of least resistance is to ignore those two and figure out how to sort out the remaining three. Not even necessarily a conscious decision in some cases.

jonascopenhagen 13 years ago |

I know a salesperson who's timid and actually sells more than her extroverted coworkers - probably because people often trust calm and down-to-earth salespeople more than they trust the loud and slightly obnoxious kind.

Point is, being timid may in some cases mean that people will trust you more.

Mz 13 years ago |

Timidity tends to read as lack of confidence, which is a social cue suggesting they don't really know or aren't really sure. Most people base their conclusions on that sort of social cue, in part because they frequently lack sufficient knowledge to judge the substance in any meaningful way.

Buzaga 13 years ago |

In a word, psychology, try reading some stuff from Ramit Sethi from IWillTeachYouToBeRich[1] and others who study human behavior and it gets clear pretty quick...

in an episode in Doug he goes into his friends and suggest they all go something X in a shy way, everybody goes "hm, I don't know, lets see.." and 2 minutes later a "popular guy" arrives and calls everyone to do the same thing smiling, enthusiastic and everyone accepts it, Pronto!

This sort of things are absolutely real independently if you think it's fair or not, the best you/your friend would want to do is start learning those things so you can learn to actually communicate your thoughts effectively, because that's what the other dude is managing to do(personally I think "communicative-intelligence", i.e. soft-skills, is just as important as "hard-intelligence", what you seemed to mention, having both means you're "the man")

Being soft-spoken has nothing to do with it, I think there's a lot of aggressive/confident/effective communicators who are.. but being non confrontational when you know you're right is a really bad trait, no shareholder or business owner will ever trust a guy who won't speak his mind for not wanting to confront...

[1]: iwillteachyoutoberich.com

Buzaga 13 years ago | |

I'd advise you not listen to comments that mention "cult of personality" and this sort of stuff, you gotta turn this around... it's your friends fault he can't communicate properly, not everyone else they don't live inside your friend's head!