How good it feels when someone hears us without passing judgment on us or without trying to mold us. Carl Rogers, a well-known psychologist, once expressed: “when I have been heard, I can re-perceive my world in a new way and go on.” When George W. Bush held the mic standing on the landfill, a word he had said had made him a legend: “I can hear you!”

The world has been too much voice. Good teachers are no longer recognized for what they say but for their ability to listen and ask insightful questions. Both talking and listening are ways to clear confusion, but listening is more like an active form of caring. Task-oriented people in other industries may find it hard to see how powerful listening is, but great teachers know it can heal.

Charles Handy claimed in his writing, Inside Organisations: “It is sometimes arrogance to trust our views more than those of others. Great leaders are in the furnace of humility and confidence, which includes the ability to admit on occasion that we are wrong.” So do a great teacher.