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