Listening is fun!!!

In my profession listening is arguably the most important aspect of my job. I am not a clinician but, I do have deeply personal conversations with my client’s. There is a “counseling” aspect to my job. I often have discussions with my clients that focus on “where are you now, where do you want to go and how will we work together to get you there?”
“Failure to listen is probably the cause of more interpersonal problems than any other aspect of human behavior” Jianying Lu
In terms of goal setting with my client’s, how can I set a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and trackable goals if I do not actively listen to my clients? I do not listen to my client’s I could be setting totally inappropriate goals. I always have to keep in mind it is not about what I want. It is about what the client wants, now of course there when dealing with human beings there are always exceptions to the rules. This is a good time to bring up the point that I feel that there are definitely more than four types of listeners (as described in the Jianying Lu article) and that any given time we are mixture of each one.
I am sure I am no different than anybody else when I say listening is a very important aspect of my job.
Listening to my client’s is one of the things I love the most about my job. It gives me the opportunity to really get to know them. It has given me the opportunity to learn about so many things. One of the things I am constantly stressing to all of my clients is “if we do not talk and we do not maintain contact how am I going to be able to assist you?” Communication is essential to understanding each other. This is just common sense but, how often do things go wrong because of a lack of communication or miscommunication?
How can we learn about each other if we don’t listen to each other?