CHAPTER 4 : LISTENING IN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Hearing & Listening

Listening is an interpersonal skill as critical as the skill of speaking

Hearing is a physical ability

Personal Benefits

Professional benefits

of listening is establish and communicate power

Good listening skill make workers more productive

better comprehend the projects they are assigned

Build strong rapport with coworkers, managers and clients

Satisfy basic human needs of being heard and being werid

Good listeners do not "get taken" very often

Open doors for ideas thus encourage creativity

Purposes of human communication

Increase job satisfaction

Effective listeners are constantly learning

1⃣ To learn


Learn and understand other people

2⃣ To influence


People who are influential in your life are very likely the people who listen, know and understand you

3⃣ To help


Listen to other's concern

4⃣ To play


Referred to as appreciate listening would include all those listening experiences where your purpose is primarily enjoyment

5⃣ To relate


To gain social acceptance and popularity and to make people like us

Styles of Effective Listening

The Process of Listening

Stage 3 : Remembering

Stage 4 : Evaluating

Stage 2 : Understanding

Stage 5 : Responding

Stage 1 : Receiving

👤 Attention and concentration


👤 Listening begins with receiving the messages the speaker sends, verbal and nonverbal


👤 Popular disclaimers

  • hedging, credentialing, sin licenses, cognitive disclaimers, appeals for the suspension of judgement

👤 Learning


👤 A stage which you learn what the speaker means grasp the thoughts and emotional tone expressed


👤 General suggestion

  • prepare yourself to listen, avoid distractions, pay special attention to the introduction, take notes in outline from, assume relevance, listen for understanding

👤 Memory


👤 Memory for speech is not reproducible; you do not just repeat what the speaker said in your mind


👤 False memory syndrome is a condition in which a person "remembers" prior events that never happened

👤 Critical thinking


👤 Judging the message


👤 You may try to evaluate the speaker's underlying intentions or motives

👤 Competence in giving feedback


👤 While the speaker is speaking, your response should be encouraging and acknowledge that you are listening to the speaker


👤 Responses given after the speaker has ceased speaking are usually more extensive and may include expressions of empathy

Bad listening habits

❗ Faking attention


❗ Allowing disruptions


❗ Overlistening


❗ Dismissing subjects as uninteresting


❗ Stereotyping


❗ Failing to observe nonverbal aids

Problem-causing Listening Response

Listener type

⚠ The static listener

  • Gives no feedback, reveals no expression

⚠ The monotonous feedback giver

  • Seems responsive, but the responses never vary

⚠ The overly expressive listener

  • Reacts to just about everything with extreme responses

⚠ The reader/writer

  • While 'listening' reads or writes, only occasionally glances up

⚠ The eye avoider

  • Looks all around the room and at others but never at you

⚠ The preoccupied listener

  • Listens to other things at the same time, often with headphones with the sound so loud that it interferes with your own thinking

⚠ The waiting listener

  • Listens for a cue to take over the speaking turn

⚠ The thought-completing listener

  • Listens a little and then finishes your thought

Surface versus Depth Listening

Polite versus Impolite listening

Nonjudgmental versus Critical Listening

Active versus Inactive Listening

Empathic versus Objective Listening

Emphatic listening

  • To understand what a person means and feels, listen with some degree of empathy the feeling of another's feeling

Objective Listening

  • To go beyond empathy and measure meanings and feelings against some objective reality

Listen judgmentally

  • With open mind with a view toward understanding

Critical Listening

  • With a view toward making some kind of evaluation or judgment

Surface listening

  • In most messages there's an obvious meaning that you can derive from surface listening - a literal reading of the words and sentences

Depth listening

  • On one level, the message is obvious
  • But depth listening can reveal another, perhaps more important level

Polite listening

  • You will want to listen politely and you will want to express this politeness through your listening behavior

Impolite listening

  • You would not want to listen politely. Example when someone is being verbally abusive

Function of Active Listening

  • Helps you as a listener to check your understanding of what the speaker said
  • Stimulates the speaker to explore feelings and thoughts

Four types of messages send solutions that you should avoid in your active listening

  • Ordering messages
  • Warning and threatening messages
  • Preaching and moralizing messages
  • Advising messages

Techniques of Active Listening

  • Paraphrase the speaker's meaning
  • Express understanding of the speaker's feeling
  • Ask questions