Why We Talk Past Each Other and How to Truly Connect
- Nov 18, 2025
- 4 min read
Written by David Perry, Executive and Leadership Coach
David Perry is an Executive and Leadership Coach who integrates mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and ontological coaching to help leaders lead with greater awareness and authenticity. His work bridges a lifelong career in technology with a deep commitment to human growth and connection.
We live in a world overflowing with communication, yet so many of our conversations leave us feeling unseen, unheard, or not understood. From leadership meetings to relationships and family life, it seems like we’re speaking more and connecting less. Why is it so hard to feel truly heard, and what can we do about it? In my years coaching leaders and teams, I’ve seen this pattern repeat itself across industries and cultures.
Why we keep missing each other
As Stephen Covey wrote in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”:
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.”
Covey highlighted what I often see in executive sessions, attention shifts from understanding to defending positions. We listen through filters, our opinions, assumptions, and personal stories, that limit what we’re able to hear and understand from others. In Ontological Coaching, this is called our already listening, the pre-existing moods and assessments shaping how we interpret and translate the world. We don’t hear people as they are, we hear them as we are, shaped by mood, memory, and meaning. Becoming aware of this filter creates a profound shift, helping us see that misunderstanding isn’t a failure of intellect, it’s a limitation of presence.
Hidden cost of disconnection
When listening breaks down, trust erodes. In workplaces, ideas are overlooked and teams become disengaged. In relationships, minor misunderstandings accumulate, creating emotional distance. People stop contributing not because they have nothing to say, but because they believe no one is truly listening.
Research from Salesforce found that employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.
Leadership research from Zenger Folkman reinforces this. Listening quality has one of the strongest correlations with trust. In their analysis of more than 4,200 leaders, those rated as poor listeners ranked at the 15th percentile in trust, while excellent listeners ranked at the 86th percentile.
The real consequences of poor listening go beyond miscommunication, they include a loss of connection, diminished creativity, and a feeling of not belonging.
New way of listening
The solution isn’t simply to listen better. It is to transform the way of being from which we listen, what we call our listening of the world. It is about how we show up for the conversation.
Philosopher Martin Buber called this the I-Thou relationship, meeting another person not as an object to manage but as a being to encounter. Ontological Coaching builds on this through the notion of the legitimate other, holding each person as equally valid in their experience and interpretation.
Holding someone as a legitimate other doesn’t mean agreeing with them. Instead, it involves acknowledging that their viewpoint comes from a consistent world of meaning that warrants respect. It entails maintaining an open stance, reflected in our words, emotions, and physical presence. Shoulders relax, breathing slows, and curiosity is reignited.
When we listen this way, difference stops being a threat and becomes a source of insight. German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer described this as “accepting things that are against me,” the willingness to let another viewpoint challenge my own. When a leader experiences this shift in real time, it is visible, their whole presence changes.
Way of being that connects
Curiosity is the mental and emotional posture that transforms listening from simply reacting into a process of discovery.
A curious listener doesn’t seek agreement, they seek understanding. Curiosity suspends judgment long enough to ask:
What matters most to this person right now?
What are they experiencing that I might not be seeing?
What assumption of mine could I release, just for a moment?
In leadership, curiosity fosters psychological safety. In relationships, it turns disagreement into dialogue. In ourselves, it reawakens humility, the awareness that we don’t see everything.
Practices for real connection
Hold the other as legitimate: Disagreement doesn’t make someone wrong, it makes them human. Silently affirm, “Your perspective is valid, even if I see it differently.” This approach fosters dialogue rather than debate.
Pause before you respond: Most misunderstandings arise in the space between hearing and reacting. A single conscious breath can shift a conversation from defensive to open. I’ve seen this single breath change the course of a difficult performance review.
Listen for meaning, not for mistakes: Focus on the intention behind someone’s words rather than how perfectly they express them. When people feel safe, they will refine what they mean.
These are not techniques, they are practices of being. They require patience, awareness, and curiosity in motion.
The conversation that changes everything
When we slow down, listen with curiosity, and hold others as legitimate, understanding emerges naturally. Real connection isn’t about saying more, it is about being more present.
The next time you feel unheard, start not with different words but with a different way of being. Pause. Breathe. Get curious. And listen as if there is something new to learn, because there always is. You can feel the space widen when curiosity enters the room.
If you’d like support in bringing this kind of listening and presence into your leadership, relationships, or team, I’d be happy to explore that with you. You can learn more about my work, upcoming retreats in the Swiss Alps, and one-to-one coaching at purecoach.me, and, if it resonates, book a conversation with me there.
Read more from David Perry
David Perry, Executive and Leadership Coach
David Perry is an Executive and Leadership Coach dedicated to helping people lead with awareness, compassion, and integrity. He integrates mindfulness and ontological coaching to support meaningful transformation in how leaders see themselves and the world. With more than three decades in high tech–including pioneering work in early RAID data-storage systems–David bridges the precision of engineering with the depth of human understanding. As a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, he guides leaders to move beyond striving and return to presence, where clarity and authentic leadership naturally emerge.
