Listening Chapter 4

Hearing

• Physiological process
• Complex
• Sound waves through ears
• Transmitted to brain

Listening

• Process of recognizing, understanding, and accurately interpreting messages.
• Seems automatic but its complex.
• Takes practice to get better.

The Listening Process

• Selecting: Choose one sound over another
• Attending: Focusing attention on selected message
• Understanding: Interpreting and making sense of messages
• Remembering message
• Feedback or reaction to message

Formal Education in Listening

Think and Write

• What's the difference between the two examples?
• What did you do to listen more?
• What did I do that helped or hindered the process?

Talking has more apparent advantages

Whatever the Goal

• Boss
• Convince others to vote
• Describe hair cut
• Gain admiration, respect or liking of others
• Or so you think!

Talk too much

Not all are Stage Hogs

• Men interrupt more for control
• Women to communicate aggreement
• If you are a hog, go from 50% to 25% of time.

Paraphrase

Paraphrase

• Restate in own words what you think you've heard with out adding anything new.
• Double checks.
• Sincerely trying to understand.

Ask Questions

Questions

• Elaborate on information
• Emotional situations: Why does that bother you so much? You sound upset--is there something wrong?
• Sincere vs. counterfeit questions (which shoes do you think I should wear?)

Change Wording

Reflect the Underlying Theme

Reflect the Underlying Theme

• When you want to summarize the theme that seems to run through another person's conversation, a complete or partial check is good.

Mindless Listening

• Do most of the time
• Passive like a sponge absorbs water
• Careful listening is hard work (heart rate, respiration and body temp rise)

Pseudolistening

• Looks like you are paying attention but really are not

Selective Listening

• Only pay attention to the parts of remarks that interest you.

Defensive Listening

• Take innocent comments as personal attacks.

Message Overload

• Bombarded with personal messages, mass media messages and background noise.

Multitasking

• Divide your attention.
• This costs!
• Studies show that carrying out tasks while deluged with calls, emails (even when told to ignore) makes IQ drop 10%.

Think and Write

• How often are you talking with a friend and you start texting? What happens to the conversation?
• Do you write a paper, listen to music and text at the same time? How well do you do all of these things?

Faulty Assumptions

• Give a mental brush off because we assume others' remarks don't have much value.

Think and Write

• How often do you brush someone off and don't listen to them because you think their ideas don't have much value?
• At work? At home?

Think and Write

• Think about one of your most important relationships.
• Which faulty listening behaviors do you find most annoying?
• What would the other person say about your most annoying listening faults?

Tip #2 SOLER UP

• Squarely face speaker
• Open up your posture and uncross your arms
• Lean toward the speaker
• make Eye contact
• Relax

Take Notes because

Check out Emotions

Listen for Unexpressed Feelings

• People don't say what's on their minds or in their hearts.
• There are lots of reasons why:
• Tact, confusion, lack of awareness, fear of being judged...
• It can be valuable to listen for unexpressed messages.

Slow Down

Think and Write

• Think of a time when you have called customer service, whether for a malfunctioning product, questionable charge or product information.
• How do you feel the interaction went; was the service person a good listener and effectively solved the problem?
• What were some of the effective listening behaviors used?
• If it was unsuccessful, why not? What could have been improved?

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