9: Listening
9.1: Understanding How and Why We Listen
Action-oriented listeners: Listeners who focus on what action needs to take place in regards to a received message and try to formulate an organized way to initiate that action
Back-channel cues: Verbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking; consiste of verbal cues like “uh-huh”, and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact and learning forward
Content-oriented listeners: Listeners who like to listen to complex information and evaluate the content of a message, often from multiple perspectives, before drawing conclusions
Critical listening: Listening with the goal of analyzing or evaluating a message based on information presented verbal and information that can be inferred from context
Discriminative listening: A focused and instrumental type of listening that is primarily physiological; occurs mostly at the receiving stage of the listening process
Empathic listening: Listening that occurs when we try to understand or experience what a speaker is thinking or feeling; the most challenging form of listening
Informational listening: Listening with the goal of comprehending and retaining information
Listening: The learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages
Long-term memory: A mental storage capability to which stimuli in short-term memory can be transferred if they are connected to existing schema and in which information can be stored indefinitely
Paraphrasing: A responding behavior characterized by rephrasing another’s message into your own words; shows that you understand what was communicated
People-oriented listeners: Listeners concerned about the emotional states of others and listen with the purpose of offering support in interpersonal relationships
Short-term memory: A mental storage capability that can retain stimuli for twenty seconds to one minute
Time-oriented listeners: Listeners who are more concerned about time limits and timelines than they are with the content or senders of a message
9.2: Barriers to Effective Listening
Aggressive listening: A bad listening practice in which people pay attention in order to attack something that a speaker says
Bad messages: Messages that present listening difficulties; often includes poorly structured messages, too much jargon, vague messages, etc.
Bad speakers: Speakers that present listening difficulties: often includes message overload, message complexity, etc.
Distorted listening: Listening that occurs when we incorrectly recall information, skew information to fit our expectations or existing schema, or add material to embellish or change information
Eavesdropping: A bad listening practice that involves a calculated and planned attempt to secretly listen to a conversation, which is a violation of the speakers’ privacy
Interrupting: A bad listening practice (such as overlapping statements, etc.) that becomes distracting for the speaker or are unnecessary
Narcissistic listening: A form of self-centered and self-absorbed listening in which listeners try to make the interaction about them
Physiological noise: Noise stemming from a physical illness, injury or bodily stress; for example, a broken leg, a headache, etc.
Prejudiced listening: Listening that occurs when listeners try to preserve their own ways of thinking and avoid being convinced of something different; stop to listen because we prejudge a person based on identity or ideas
Pseudo-listening: Behaving as if you’re paying attention to a speaker when you’re actually not
Psychological noise: Noise stemming from our psychological states including moods and level of arousal; can facilitate or impede listening; for example, positive and negative emotions such as love or stress will influence our communication
Response preparation: Our tendency to rehearse what we are going to say next while a speaker is still talking
Selective attention: Our tendency to pay attention to the messages that benefit us in some way and filter others out
9.3: Improving Listening Competence
Active listening: The process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening behaviors with positive cognitive listening practices
Active-empathetic listening: Listening that occurs when a listener becomes actively and emotionally involved in an interaction in such a way that it is conscious on the part of the listener and perceived by the speaker.
Covert coaching: Sending yourself messages containing advice about better listening
Covert questioning: Asking yourself questions about the content in ways that focus your attention and reinforce the information.
High-context communication: A style of communication in which much of the meaning generated in an interaction comes from nonverbal and contextual cues rather than verbal communication; for example, East Asian and Latin American cultures use a high context communication style.
Listening environment: Characteristics and norms of an organization and its members that contribute to expectations for and perceptions about listening
Low-context communication: A style of communication in which much of the meaning generated in an interaction comes from the verbal communication used rather than nonverbal or contextual cues; for example, US Americans us a low-context communication style
Mental Bracketing: The process of intentionally separating intrusive or irrelevant thoughts that may distract you from listening.
Mirroring: A listener’s replication of the nonverbal signals of a speaker; for example, adopting the posture of another in order to project empathy
Mnemonic devices: Techniques that can aid in information recall; includes acronyms, rhymes, and visualizations; for example, setting the ABCs to music to memorize the alphabet or “i before e except after c” to remember spelling rules, etc.
Self-reinforcement: Sending affirmative and positive messages to yourself
