Listening and Responding to Others
I.
Listening is at least as important as talking in the communication process.
A. Studies indicate that we spend about half our waking time listening,
which is more than other communication activity.
B. Learning to listen well enhances personal, academic, social, and
professional effectiveness.
II.
Listening is a complex processes.
A. Listening and hearing are not synonymous.
1. Hearing is a physiological activity that occurs when sound
waves hit our eardrums.
2. People also receive messages through sight (nonverbal
behaviors, lip reading, sign language).
3. Listening is a complex process of being mindful, hearing,
selecting and organizing information, interpreting
communication, responding, and remembering.
B. Mindfulness takes place when we focus on what is going on at the
present moment.
1. Mindfulness is an ethical commitment to attend fully to
another person.
2. Mindfulness enhances communication in two ways:
a. Attending mindfully to others increases our
understanding of how they feel and what they think
about what they are saying.
b. Mindfulness promotes more complete communication
by others.
C. Listening involves physically receiving communication but is not
limited to hearing sounds.
1. People who do not hear well may have difficulty receiving
oral messages.
2. Other physiological factors influence how and how well we
listen.
D. We selectively attend to and organize some aspects of communication
such as gender and speaking rate, and not others.
1. We tend to notice stimuli that are intense, loud, or unusual.
2. We use cognitive schemata (Chapter 3) to organize our
perceptions.
3. We construct others and their communication by the
schemata that we use to organize our perceptions about them.
E. We interpret by putting together what we have selectively perceived
and organized in order to make sense of communication.
1. Interpretation determines the meaning of communication.
2. Effective interpretation depends on ability to understand
another person on his or her own terms.
3. Recognizing others’ viewpoints even if you don’t agree with
them is an ethical responsibility of a good listener.
F. Effective listening also involves responding, both during the process of
interaction and after another person has stopped speaking.
1. Skillful listeners give signs to show that they are involved in
the interaction.
2. Responding involves nonverbal communication.
3. Responding involves giving feedback.
G. Remembering important parts of interpretations of the message is the
final aspect of the listening process.
1. Remembering is not simply recalling literal messages. It is
the ability to recall your interpretation of the messages.
2. We forget about two-thirds of the meanings after about 8
hours of hearing a message.
3. Selectively focusing our attention is especially important
when we listen to presentations that include a lot of
information.
III.
There are two general kinds of obstacles to effective listening: situational
obstacles and internal obstacles.
A. Situational obstacles include message overload, message complexity,
and environmental distractions.
1. Message overload occurs when we receive too many
messages to process all of them.
2. Message complexity exists when communication is
particularly complex, complicated, or otherwise difficult to
understand and follow.
3. Environmental distractions, such as ambient noise, can divert
our attention or make it difficult to hear clearly.
B. Internal obstacles can also inhibit effective communication.
1. Preoccupation with our own thoughts and concerns can
impede good listening.
2. Prejudgments can get in the way of understanding what
others mean.
a. Sometimes we think that we already know what the
others will say so we don’t listen carefully.
b. Mind reading occurs when we assume that we know
what others feel, think or are going to say and we fit
their messages to our preconceptions.
3. Lack of effort and energy can reduce listening effectiveness.
4. Reacting to words that evoke very strong emotional
responses, positive or negative, can reduce effective listening.
5. Failure to recognize different styles of communicating can
interfere with listening.
IV.
There are six forms of ineffective listening.
A. Pseudolistening is pretending to listen; we appear attentive but our
minds are elsewhere.
B. Monopolizing occurs when a person hogs the conversational stage.
1. Conversational rerouting is shifting the topic to ourselves.
2. Interrupting can be introducing a new or diversionary topic
through questions that challenge the speaker.
3. Not all interruptions are attempts to monopolize
communication. Sometimes it can be a sign of support and/or
interest.
C. Selective listening can take place in two ways:
1. Selectively focusing on parts of communication that support
our views and that interest us or
2. Selectively screening out parts of communication that diverge
from our views or that do not interest us.
D. Defensive listening occurs when individuals perceive personal attacks
where none are intended.
1. Defensive listening takes place when we assume that others
don’t like, trust, or respect us, and read other motives into
whatever they say.
2. Defensive listening may be confined to areas where we judge
ourselves to be inadequate or areas in which we feel negative.
E. Ambushing is listening for the purpose of attacking the person
speaking and/or that person’s ideas.
F. Literal listening occurs when individuals attend only to the
content-level of meaning in communication and overlook the
relationship level of meaning
V.
The key to effective listening is to adapt to specific communication goals.
A. Informational and critical listening is intended to gain and evaluate
information. It requires paying close attention to content.
1. The primary purpose of informational listening is to gain and
understand information.
2. The primary purpose of critical listening is to make
judgments of people and ideas.
3. There are five skills that we can use to be a better
informational and critical listener.
a. We can be mindful to carefully attend to what is being
communicated no matter how complex the material.
b. We can try to control obstacles and distractions to
listening.
c. We can ask questions so that speakers have an
opportunity to clarify their messages.
d. We can use aids to try to help us to recall the
information.
e. We can try to organize the information by regrouping
the information into categories.
B. Relational listening focuses on the relationship level of meaning, or the
level of meaning that has to do with feelings and relationships between
communicators.
1. Relational communication requires mindfulness.
2. Relational communication works best if we suspend
judgment.
3. Successful relational communication involves understanding
the other’s perspective.
a. Minimal encouragers, responses that gently invite the
communicator to elaborate, can help us gain insight into
the other person’s experiences.
b. Paraphrasing, where we reflect our interpretations of the
communication of others back to them, can help us
clarify and figure out what the communicator intended.
4. Expressing support, which does not necessarily require that
we be in agreement, is important to relational
communication.
C. There are two additional listening goals.
1. We don’t need to concentrate on organizing or remembering
when listening for pleasure.
2. In some situations, we listen to make fine distinctions in
sounds in order to draw more accurate conclusions.