Communication Chapter 7

The Nature of Listening

Listening is the active process of making meaning out of another person’s spoken message.

  • Listening is active, not automatic

  • Listening requires more than just hearing

People have various listening styles that represent differences in their goals for listening

  • Relational style: emphasized concern for other people’s emotions and interests

  • Task-oriented style: emphasizes concise, error-free presentations

  • Critical style: emphasizes intellectual challenges

  • Analytical style: emphasizes withholding judgment while listening

Listening effectively is important.

  • We spend much of our waking day listening

  • Good listening skills are essential in the workplace, families, and social relationships

Misconceptions about listening:

  • Myth→ hearing is the same thing as listening

  • Myth→ listening is natural and effortless

  • Myth→ all listeners hear the same message

Culture and sex affect some dimensions of listening behavior.

  • Expectations for directness

  • Nonverbal listening response

The HURIER model explains the stages of effective listening:

  • Hearing

  • Understanding

  • Remembering

  • Interpreting

  • Evaluating

  • Responding

People often engage in these types of listening:

  • Informational listening

  • Critical listening

  • Empathic listening

Informational listening means listening to learn.

  • We engage in informational listening when taking notes in class, watching the news, or paying attention to driving directions

  • Informational listening is a relatively passive response

Critical listening means listening to evaluate or analyze something

  • We engage in critical listening when we pay attention to a commercial to see whether we want to buy a product

  • Critical listening doesn’t necessarily mean criticizing what we are hearing; rather, it means evaluating what we are hearing

Empathetic listening means trying to understand what the speaker is thinking or feeling

  • Perspective-taking helps us understand a situation from another’s point of view

  • Empathetic concern is the ability to identify how someone is feeling and to experience those feelings ourselves

Effective listening can occur online as well as face-to-face

It is possible to find people online, such as in support groups, who can listen actively and empathically to what you have to say

To be an effective listener online, take notes of these suggestions:

  • Be attentive to what others are saying

  • Remember that words can be misinterpreted

  • Don’t be a lurker

Common Barriers to Effective Listening:

Noise is a barrier to listening

  • Noise is anything that distracts us from listening to what we wish to listen to

  • Some noise is physical

  • Some noise is physiological

Pseudolistening and selective attention are barriers to effective listening

  • Pseudolistening means pretending to pay attention to someone

  • Selective attention means listening only to what we want to hear

Information overload is a barrier to effective listening

  • We are exposed to multiple messages daily

  • It can be difficult to pay attention to particular messages when we have so many to process

  • Information overload is especially common online

Glazing over is a barrier to effective listening

  • People speak more slowly than we can listen, so our minds can wander when we listen to others

  • Glazing over can cause us to miss important details, listen uncritically, and make it appear as though we are not listening

Rebuttal tendency is a barrier to effective listening

  • Rebuttal tendency means debating a speaker’s point and formulating a reply while the person is still speaking

  • Rebuttal tendency requires mental energy that should be spent listening and can cause us to miss details

Closed-mindedness is a barrier to effective listening

  • Closed-mindedness is the tendency to not listening to anything with which you disagree

  • Many people are closed-minded only about certain issues, not about everything

Competitive interrupting is a barrier to effective listening

  • Competitive interrupting means using interruptions to take control of the conversation

  • Most interruptions are not competitive

Becoming a better listener

Become a better informational listener:

  • Separate what is and is not said

  • Avoid the confirmation bias

  • Listen for substance more than style

Become a better critical listener:

  • Be a skeptic

  • Evaluate a speaker’s credibility

  • Understand probability

Become a better empathic listener:

  • Listen nonjudgmentally

  • Acknowledge feelings

  • Communicate support nonverbally