"The paradox of listening is that by relinquishing power — the temporary power of speaking, asserting, knowing — we become more powerful." - Amy Cuddy. The irony here is that to listen well, we have to be willing to pause our problem-solving skills, which allows us the space and attention to gather relevant information ...
Listeners are often unable to accurately attend to messages because of four types of noise. Physical noise is caused by the physical setting a listener is in. Psychological noise exists within a listener's own mind and prevents him or her from attending to a speaker's message.
Effective listening is actively absorbing the information given to you by a speaker, showing that you are listening and interested, and providing feedback to the speaker so that he or she knows the message was received.
Effective listening has three modes: attentive listening, responsive listening, and active listening. Understanding these modes will help you increase your listening accuracy and reduce the opportunity for misunderstanding.
Asking questions to follow up or for clarification, paraphrasing the individual communications, and summarizing the conversation are all activities that show the listener's cognitive engagement in the conversation, indicating his or her attempts to fully understand and correctly interpret the messages being relayed.
The four main causes of poor listening are due to not concentrating, listening too hard, jumping to conclusions and focusing on delivery and personal appearance.
Being distracted - fidgeting, doodling, looking at a watch, yawning. Inappropriate expressions and lack of head nods. Often when a listener is engaged with a speaker, they nod their head.
Focus your conversations on the other person: To help prevent listening barriers before they arise, approach conversations with the mindset that you genuinely want to learn more about the other person while they talk. This can naturally help you get rid of distractions and focus only on the conversation you're having.
Empathetic listening is the most challenging form of listening and occurs when we try to understand or experience what a speaker is thinking or feeling. Empathetic listening is distinct from sympathetic listening.
Pseudo-listening is a type of non-listening that consists of appearing attentive in conversation while actually ignoring or only partially listening to the other speaker. The intent of pseudo-listening is not to listen, but to cater to some other personal need of the listener.
Active Listening is Difficult
But the biggest difficulty in listening is NOISE. Let's explore the topic of noise as it relates to effective communication.
Poor listening leads to misunderstandings, mistakes, confusion, degraded rapport and cooperation, judgment, blame, lost opportunities, inefficiency, frustration and reduced profits.
Passive listening is when you are hearing someone or something without putting 100% of your attention towards listening. This is a type of communication that is pretty one-sided. The individual listening passively will often not give any feedback on what they are listening to or a person speaking.
Getting ready to speak or thinking about your counterargument. ... Connecting to what the other person is saying and making it about you. ... Making assumptions or reading the mind of the speaker. ... Giving advice or counsel and believing you know the answer.
Low concentration, or not paying close attention to speakers, is detrimental to effective listening. It can result from various psychological or physical situations such as visual or auditory distractions, physical discomfort, inadequate volume, lack of interest in the subject material, stress, or personal bias.