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The heart of listening
“Nature has given us one tongue, but two ears, so that we may
hear from others twice as much as we speak”
EPICETUS
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Listening and communication
DeVito, J., O’Rourke, S., & O’Neill, L. (2000). Human communication: The New Zealand
edition. Auckland: Pearson. p. 9
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Definition of listening
“Listening is not the same as
hearing…listening involves a series of five
steps: receiving, understanding,
remembering, evaluating and responding”.
De Vito, J. (2007). The interpersonal communication book. Pearson: Boston. p. 103
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Stages of listening
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Receiving: This involves the two following stages
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Sensing
•
We use hearing and sight to receive the message
•
We pick up on verbal and non-verbal communication cues as well
as what is left out of the communication
•
It is important here to avoid distractions and avoid interrupting at
this stage
Attending
•
This is the additional part of “receiving”
•
We attend to the speaker during this stage
•
We engage with the speaker by using appropriate non-verbal cues
•
2
Understanding
•
We decode what the speaker is saying
•
We decode both the words and non-verbal cues
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Stages of listening
3
Remembering
•
We retain what the speaker has said to us
•
However, this is retention of what we have decoded. This may
include different meanings from what the speaker intended to
communicate
4
Evaluating
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We place judgment on what has been said
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A sub-conscious process
•
We will learn more about this in week 12 when we discuss
intercultural communication
5
Responding
•
We either respond while the speaker is still sending his/her message
(eg. nodding, verbal encouragers) OR after the speaker has finished
talking
•
Remember, interpersonal communication is TRANSACTIONAL; these
stages will occur continuous and cyclically
Slides 4 & 5 were adapted from DeVito, J. (2007). The interpersonal communication
book. Pearson: Boston.
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Barriers to listening
•
Judgement
• We can have pre-conceptions about the speaker
• We can evaluate the message before we have all the information
•
Preoccupation
• We sometimes are not 100% attentive to the speaker
• We become non-participants in the communication process
•
Pseudo-listening
• Pseudo means false; pseudo listening is therefore false listening
• We often pretend we are listening
• We use fake cues, eg. nodding, verbal cues like “yes” etc
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Barriers to listening
•
Semantics
• These are the language barriers that causes listening barriers
• We often do not clarify effectively if there are language barriers
•
Excessive Talking
• Although interpersonal communication is TRANSACTIONAL, we
need to remember to be a listener…this means not dominating as
a sender
• We sometimes talk more than we listen
•
Fear
• We sometimes communicate with people who intimidate us or
who have power over us, eg. our boss. This can effect how well
we listen
• Fear is a key psychological barrier to communication
Slides 6 & 7 were adapted from Devito, J. (2007). The interpersonal communication
book. Pearson: Boston
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Types of listening
We all listen for very different reasons. There are many
different types of listening, for different contexts and
situations and personalities
•
Participatory Listening (aka active listening)
• We need to participate when listening
• We need to participate verbally and non-verbally
• We can be participatory listeners by clarifying points that we do
not understand and providing feedback to the sender
“Active listening serves several important functions. First, it helps
you as a listener check your understanding of what the speaker
has said and , more important, what he or she meant” (Devito,
2007, p. 113)
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Types of listening
•
Passive Listening (aka inactive listening)
• Sometimes passive listening is appropriate
• Allows the speaker to have time to consider what they want to say
• Can be perceived as supportive
• However it can also be interpreted as apathetic
•
Empathic Listening
• Empathy: seeing the world through the other person’s eyes;
understanding the other person’s emotions, experiences etc
• We are empathic listeners when we aim to understand how the
sender is feeling
•
Objective Listening
• Even though empathic listening is preferred, sometimes we need
to be objective listeners
• Sometimes others need someone to listen without bias
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Types of listening
•
Non-judgmental Listening and Critical Listening
• An effective listener will adopt both non-judgmental and critical
listening strategies
• We should endeavour to first listen non-judgmentally, however
critical listening involves having critical thought. This is an
important part of being a communicator (thinking for ourselves)
•
Surface versus Depth Listening
• We usually receive communication messages on different levels
• An effective listener will try to decode messages on different
levels
• We surface listen for the LITERAL meanings
• We adopt deeper listening to gain deeper meanings of what
people say to us
Slides 8-10 were adapted from De Vito, J. (2004). The interpersonal communication
book. Pearson: Boston
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Chinese character: to listen
This Chinese character – to listen - is a summary of how to effectively listening:
YOU
EAR
EYES
UNDIVIDED
ATTENTION
HEART