I've recently played through Shadowrun: Hong Kong again and a quote from Stephen R. Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" is mentioned at several points.
*spoiler (Highlight to see)*
In fact, it can even become a major point in reconciling with your character's father.
*end spoiler*

The quoted piece is, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
The idea is simple. When people listen, they don't actually hear what the person is saying because they're already comparing it to their own viewpoint and their attention is focused on formulating a rebuttal of anything that contradicts or challenges that viewpoint. I could go on about how all communication is the application of force, the philosophy of soft and hard forces and how this phenomenon is a reflection of our natural inclination towards hard styles over soft, but I won't.

What I want to talk about is a problem that crops up from time to time, where I see an artist's post receive criticism after criticism and not of the constructive type. These comments come from people who don't, and I'll paraphrase here, "look with the intent to understand; they look with the intent to critique." It doesn't matter if it's visual, auditory or read. Every artwork is created with an intent and is attempting to communicate in some fashion. We need to remember that and seek to understand that intent and then respond. I have a huge collection in my favorites but rarely comment. Why? Because I had nothing constructive to offer beyond a "Great work, I really like it," which is what I'm already communicating by clicking that favorite link. But when I do comment, it's often because the artist has tried something different and I can see what they were trying to achieve. I point out what parts of it I felt worked for me, and it has to be that "for me" part because a large part of art is subjective.

Beyond this, I've also proof-read a few pieces by rhazzazor because I know how disheartening it can be for a writer to see a wall of criticisms about how they should learn to spell. English is not Rhazzazor's first language and thus, some terms can get misused or spellings of phonetically similar words can get used that completely alter the meaning of a sentence. And where possible, I have pointed out what they said and what my correction said, just to be sure that the final piece that gets posted is what Rhazzazor intended to communicate. Constructive criticism is criticism that honours and respects the intent of the creator. And yes, that includes intentions that you do not like. Me, I don't like testicles on my herms. But you will not see a single post by me under a piece criticizing the artist for drawing or describing testicles on their herms. I'm just not likely to like it. Personally, I'm not going to like anything involving non-consensual sex or harm, either, but I'm open-minded enough to see that fantasies involving it are not the same as reality involving it. Just remember that generally people who have suffered such in real life don't like to be reminded of it and there should be warnings and tags to help them blacklist/filter that content as much as possible.