What’s a skill you consider basic, that most people don’t actually know how to do?

What’s a Skill You Consider Basic, Most People Don’t Actually Know How to Do?
I get asked a lot of questions about property verification, about medicine, about how I balance running a business with lectures and clinical postings. But someone asked me this one recently, almost as a joke, over a plate of rice at a small gathering in Benin City: “David, what’s something everybody thinks is easy, but almost nobody can actually do?”
I sat with that question longer than I expected to.
My mind first went to the obvious answers. Cooking. Driving. Public speaking. But the more I turned it over, the more I realized the real answer wasn’t a skill you’d put on a CV. It was something quieter, something we assume comes automatically with age or experience, but that most of us are still fumbling through well into adulthood.
The skill is this: listening to understand, not to reply.
Why This One Struck Me
In real estate, I sit across from people every week who are about to make one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives. Some are anxious. Some are guarded. Some have been burned before by agents who promised land that didn’t exist or documents that weren’t real. If I spend that conversation thinking about what I’ll say next, rehearsing my pitch while they’re still talking, I miss the actual thing they need from me. Usually it isn’t even information. It’s reassurance. It’s someone paying attention.
In medical school, this shows up even more sharply. We’re taught to take a history, and on paper it looks simple: ask questions, write answers, move to the next system. But a patient rarely tells you what’s wrong in the order the textbook expects. They tell you in fragments, wrapped in fear, sometimes in silence. The clinician who listens well hears the diagnosis hiding inside the story. The one who’s just waiting for their turn to ask the next scripted question misses it.
We assume listening is basic because it doesn’t require a certificate. Nobody hands you a badge for it. But watch closely in any room, a family meeting, a church counseling session, a business negotiation, and you’ll see how rare it actually is. Most of us are gifted talkers who occasionally pause.
What Makes It So Hard
I think part of the difficulty is that real listening asks you to set your own agenda down for a moment. It asks you to sit in someone else’s discomfort without rushing to fix it, explain it away, or turn the conversation back to yourself. That’s uncomfortable. Silence feels like a gap we’re obligated to fill.
There’s also a faith dimension to this for me. I think about how much of prayer, real prayer, is listening rather than talking. I used to treat prayer like a list of requests I needed to get through efficiently. Over time I’ve learned that the posture that changes you is the one where you go quiet and let something land. Life works the same way. The people who grow the most, in my experience, aren’t the ones with the sharpest opinions. They’re the ones who create room to actually receive what’s being said to them, by God, by mentors, by the people they lead.
What I’m Trying to Practice
I won’t pretend I’ve mastered this. I catch myself formulating responses mid-sentence more often than I’d like to admit, especially when I’m tired or when a conversation touches something I feel strongly about. But a few things have helped me get better:
Repeating back what I heard before I respond, even in casual conversation, just to confirm I actually caught it.
Letting a pause sit for a second or two longer than feels natural, instead of rushing to fill it.
Asking one more question before offering a solution, especially with patients, clients, or the young people I mentor through Catch Them Young.
None of these are complicated. That’s the point. The skill was never about complexity. It was about discipline, choosing, again and again, to make space for someone else instead of yourself.
A Small Challenge
So if you’re reading this, here’s the question back to you: what’s a skill you’d assumed was basic, until you actually paid attention to how rarely you saw it done well?
I suspect if we’re honest, most of us have a gap between the things we assume we’re good at and the things we’ve actually practiced. Mine, apparently, is still listening. I’m grateful for the reminder, and grateful for the people patient enough to keep teaching it to me, one conversation at a time.