Whenever people hear that I work in marketing and communications, they usually assume my job revolves around writing.
Writing articles. Writing social media captions. Writing newsletters. Writing reports and writing blogs, like this.
And to be fair, a large part of my work does involve putting words on a page.
But after spending time speaking with learners, colleagues, and community members, I’ve come to realize something unexpected.
The hardest part of communication isn’t writing.
It’s listening.
The Assumption I Didn’t Realize I Had
When I first started working in communications, I thought the challenge was finding the right words.
How do I make this story more engaging?
How do I make this article more compelling?
How do I make people care?
The focus was always on what I was going to say.
Over time, however, I noticed a pattern. The stories that resonated most with people weren’t necessarily the ones that were written most beautifully. They were the ones who captured something real.
And the only way to find something real is to listen long enough for it to appear.
That sounds obvious. But in practice, it’s surprisingly difficult.
When we’re interviewing someone, we often enter the conversation already looking for a particular quote, angle, or outcome. We have deadlines to meet and stories to produce. We want the interview to confirm what we already think we know.
The problem is that meaningful stories rarely arrive in the form we expect.
The Details We Almost Miss
One thing I’ve learned is that people often reveal the most important part of their story casually.
Not when answering the main question.
Not when talking about achievements.
But when describing something small.
A learner might spend ten minutes talking about a training program. Then, almost as an afterthought, mention that they used to be too nervous to speak English in front of others.
A participant might talk about completing a course, but the more meaningful detail is that they kept learning despite balancing school, work, or family responsibilities.
Those moments are easy to miss if we’re only listening for headlines.
They’re much easier to catch when we’re genuinely curious.
And more often than not, those details become the heart of the story.
Listening Changes the Questions We Ask
The more conversations I have, the less interested I become in asking questions that lead to predictable answers.
Questions like:
“How was the program?”
or
“What did you learn?”
usually produce responses we’ve heard before.
What often works better are questions that invite reflection.
Questions like:
“What was difficult before?”
“When did you realize something had changed?”
“What would your younger self think if they saw you today?”
These questions don’t just generate better quotes.
They help uncover experiences that people may not have thought about before.
And sometimes, they help us understand impact in a much deeper way.
Listening Is a Form of Respect
One lesson that has stayed with me is that listening is not simply a technique for collecting stories.
It’s a way of showing respect.
When we listen carefully, we allow people to define their own experiences instead of fitting them into the narrative we had already planned.
We stop treating them as examples.
We start seeing them as individuals.
This is particularly important when communicating stories about education, opportunity, and social impact.
It’s easy to focus on programs, activities, and outcomes. Those things matter. But behind every statistic is a person whose experience is more nuanced than a single number can capture.
Good communication helps people understand the numbers.
Great communication helps people understand the people behind them.
What This Means Beyond Communications
I think this lesson applies far beyond marketing and communications.
Many misunderstandings happen not because people fail to explain themselves clearly, but because others stop listening too soon.
In workplaces, classrooms, communities, and even everyday conversations, we often listen with the intention of responding.
What if we listened with the intention of understanding?
We might discover that the most valuable insight wasn’t the one we expected to hear.
And that’s what communication has taught me.
Writing matters.
Clarity matters.
Storytelling matters.
But before any of those things happen, someone has to listen.
Really listen.
Because the best stories aren’t created by communicators.
They’re discovered.