Chapter 6: Listening Effectively

What does it mean to listen effectively?

We listen effectively when we hear, understand, remember, interpret, evaluate, and respond to what someone has said. Cultural messages shape listening, just as they influence many communication behaviors.

Why is listening effectively so challenging?

Many barriers exist to effective listening, including noise, pseudolistening, selective attention, information overload, glazing over, rebuttal tendency, closed-mindedness, and competitive interrupting.

How can you improve your listening skills?

You can be a better informational listener by separating what is and isn't said, avoiding the confirmation bias, and listening for substance. You can improve your critical listening skills by being skeptical, evaluating credibility, and understanding probability. You can become better at empathic listening by listening nonjudgmentally, acknowledging a speaker's feelings, and communicating support nonverbally.

Listening:

The active process of making meaning out of another person’s spoken message.

Hearing:

The sensory process of receiving and perceiving sounds.

Attending:

Paying attention to someone’s words well enough to understand what that person is trying to communicate.

HURIER Model:

A model describing the stages of effective listening as hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding.

What are the parts of the HURIER model:

• H: Hearing

• U: Understanding

• R: Remembering

• I: Interpreting

• E: Evaluating

• R: Responding

Mnemonics:

Devices that can aid short- and long-term memory.

Interpretation:

The process of assigning meaning to information that has been selected for attention and organized.

Evaluation:

Assessing the value of information we have received.

Stonewalling:

Responding to another person’s words with silence and lack of expression.

Backchanneling:

Using facial expressions, nods, vocalizations, and verbal statements to let a speaker know you are paying attention.

Paraphrasing:

Restating in your own words what a speaker has said, to show that you understand.

Empathizing:

Conveying to a speaker that you understand and share his or her feelings.

Supporting:

Expressing your agreement with a speaker’s opinion or point of view.

Analyzing:

Providing your own perspective on what a speaker has said, such as by explaining your opinion or describing your experience.

Advising:

Communicating advice to a speaker about what he or she should think, feel, or do.

Informational listening:

Listening to learn.

Critical listening:

Listening to evaluate or analyze.

Empathic listening:

Listening to experience what the speaker thinks or feels.

Noise:

Anything that distracts people from listening to what they wish to listen to.

Pseudolistening:

Pretending to listen.

Selective attention:

Listening only to what one wants to hear and ignoring the rest.

Information overload:

The state of being overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information encountered each day.

Glazing over:

Daydreaming or allowing the mind to wander while another person is speaking.

Rebuttal tendency:

The propensity to debate a speaker’s point and formulate a reply while that person is still speaking.

Closed-mindedness:

The tendency not to listen to anything with which one disagrees.

Competitive interrupting:

The practice of using interruptions to take control of the conversation.

Confirmation bias:

The tendency to pay attention only to information that supports one’s values and beliefs, while discounting or ignoring information that does not.

Vividness Effect:

The tendency of dramatic, shocking events to distort one’s perceptions of reality.

Skepticism:

A method of questioning that involves evaluating evidence for a stated claim.