Every good conversation starts with listening. Really?

Tom Haak

October 20, 2020

“Every good conversation starts with listening”

Back in 2014 Remco Mostertman, founder of the Dutch HR Community, wanted to start a series with HR Quotes, and he asked if he could share (on Twitter) some of my videos with a nice quote. I provided some quotes, but Remco didn’t like the quote I provided with a short video about listening, so he suggested another one, he found on the internet: “Every good conversation starts with listening”. He created a picture (unfortunately I cannot find it anymore), where a very big ear was attached to my head, and a balloon with the quote. It was posted on Twitter somewhere in August 2014.

Last week someone asked me if she could use my very inspiring quote about good listening. Of course, no problem with me (although it is not my quote, but I didn’t say that). I tried to find the original picture via Google. I was not able to find the original one, but to my surprise I found many others! After an hour I found 37 versions, and I am sure there are more. I have some reservations. Many pictures are floating around with a quote attributed to me that isn’t mine. Fortunately it is harmless (something like “Every cloud has a silver lining”, or “A picture tells more than a thousand words”, also not mine by the way).