Listening skills explained
Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken or nonverbal messages. It is one of the most important skills in Business communication, which involves engaging your communication partner attentively. Listening skill is more than just hearing the said words, it also requires digesting and interpretation in order to get the actual meaning of the message.
listening requires the thinking capacity, that’s why your listening is better when you think more on the message presented to you in communication. Here are some facts about listening and thinking according to research findings:
- Generally, people can think approximately 500 words per minute.
- The average person speaks 125 – 150 words per minute.
- Moreover, people can give their full attention for approximately 20 seconds.
- The average time spent on various communication skills. 53% listening
- 14% writing
- 16% speaking
- 17% reading
WHY DO WE HAVE PROBLEMS LISTENING?
One of the major causes of listening difficulties is a psychological problem called cognitive dissonance. In line with listening skills, Cognitive Dissonance, is a psychological condition and theory that states that people feel conflicts if they hold two or more attitudes that are in opposition to each other. One way people reduce dissonance is by ignoring the information that is causing the conflict. In addition to that, our listening capacity is affected by the following factors among others:
- Anxiety-Sometimes we can’t listen because our anxiety is too high. This may be due to restlessness, or any type of worry that overwhelms one’s mind and dominates their thinking, stopping them to concentrate on the communicator’s details in the message.
- The Controlling Listener: This is a personality issue, implying that the listener (or the affected) always looks for a way to talk about themselves and what they are thinking about.
- The Passive Listener-Exerts little listening effort in listening and hardly pays attention to the message content.
Types of Listening
We cannot talk about listening skills without mentioning the four main types of listening, which are:
- Listening for information: In this case, the listener’s only interest is to get the message contained in the heard information
- Critical listening: This involves going beyond just hearing and includes the digestion, evaluation and analysis of the message.
- Empathetic listening: This is a real and complete engagement in communication, whereby the listener makes sure the conveyor of the message is convinced that their information has landed in an attentive ear. An empathetic listener, tries to fully fit in the agenda of the conveyor of the message. This very critical to the counselors and guidance teachers or even a dedicated member of support team in a business entity.
- Listening for enjoyment: This is also known as Appreciative listening which consists of paying attention the the given information because of the pleasure that results from it. This usually applies to your favorite lecture, news channel, music, homely or preaching. It also applies to a long awaited piece of information,no matter where it comes from
Forms of Non-listening
As far as listening skills are concerned, non-listening is a form of communication, whereby the listener seems to be paying attention to the message, while in reality, the concentration is elsewhere. We can give examples in the following cases:
- Pseudo listening: This is the pretender’s listening type,consisting on one’s pretending to listen, while partially or completely ignoring the speaker’s message.
- Monopolizing: This is also known as Hogging the stage, whereby the listener continuously focusing communication on ourselves instead of the person who is talking. The listener in some cases does something or expresses some strange behavior to divert attention to themselves rather than the speaker
- Selective listening– We screen out the parts that don’t interest us. We reject communication that bores us or makes us uncomfortable.
- Defensive Listening– Perceiving personal attacks, criticism, or hostile undertones in communication where none is intended.
- Ambushing– Listening carefully for the purpose of attacking the other speaker Literal Listening-Listening only to the content level of meaning and ignoring the relationship level of meaning.
Concluding the listening skills, we can say that in any business or in your profession requiring interaction with people, there are many reactions that you should expect and be ready to deal with. Most of behavioral challenges in communication are result of listening skills, either by the speaker or the recipient of the message. As a teacher, counselor or customer care attendant, you should be aware of these skills in listening and communication, so as to render as effective services as possible.