LISTENING IN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
The Importance of Listening
To establish and communicate power
To Learn - to learn about and understand other people
To Relate - It is a way of telling others that you care about them
To Influence - To influence other people's attitude, values, belief, opinions, and behaviors
To Play - Listening to music or listening to the amusing stories
To Help - Offering advice or help or any specific kind
The Process of Listening
Receiving - hearing & attending to the message
Understanding - Deciphering meaning from the message you hear
Remembering - Retaining what you hear in
Evaluating - Thinking critically about and judging the message
Responding - Answering or giving feedback to the speaker
Style of Effective Listening
Emphatic & Objective Listening
Emphatic listening - understand what a person means
Objective Listening - Go beyond empathy, measure meaning & feeling against objective reality
Nonjudgmental & Critical Listening
Listen for understanding while suspending judgment
Nonjudgmental listening - Listen with open mind
Critical Listening - Analyzed & evaluate the message
Weasel Words - are those terms whose meanings are slippery & difficult to pin down
Euphemisms - Make the negative & unpleasant appear positive & appealing
Jargon - is the specialized language of a professional class
Gobbledygook - is overly complex language that overwhelms that listener instead of communicating meaning
Surface & Depth Listening
Surface Listening - Literal meaning of words/sentence
Depth Listening - Listen to underlying messages
Focus on both verbal & nonverbal messages
Listen for both content & relational messages
Make special note of self-referential statements - statements referring back to speaker
Don't disregard surface or literal meaning
Active & Inactive Listening
Active listening - Process of sending back to the speaker as what you (as a listener) think the speaker meant
Check your understanding of what the speaker said/meant
Let the speaker know you acknowledge & accept his feeling
Stimulates the speaker to explore feelings & thoughts