Chp 7: Listening Skills

BOOK: pgs. 99-111

PDF: pgs. 109-121

What you need to Know

• Hearing versus Listening - distinguish each

• Percentage of time spent listening

• Listening myths

• EQ - Emotional intelligence and how does this relate to being a good listener; What is EQ and how does it apply to being a good listener - traits of a person with high EQ

• Women - rapport and men - report talk theory

• HURIER Stages of listening (hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, responding)

• Listening Purposes (Types): appreciative, comprehensive, critical and empathic (show support)

• Empathy, what is a key element of empathy according to the empathy animated video we watched with the bear, fox and goat) Listening fidelity

• Pseudolistening, prejudicing, selective listening, advising

• Know that listening is a skill

• Reasons for Poor listening (message overload - such as right now with this exam review; rapid thought, psychological noise; physical noise; hearing problems; assumptions; talking more than listening; cultural differences)

• Guidelines for Better listening

• What are 5 ways to listen better according to Julian Treasure’s Ted Talk

• Practice quiz: http://fountainheadpress.com/commpath/quizzes/commpath_ch07/

Miscellaneous

• Are you a good listener?

• What do we spend more time on: listening or talking?

• Julian Treasure says

• “We are losing our listening” in his Ted Talk “5 WAYS TO LISTEN BETTER”

• https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better?language=en

• We spend 45% of our time listening; 30% of our time speaking; 16% reading and 9% writing.

• We can speak an average of 150 wpm, but can process (listen and read) to up to 650 wpm (p. 107).

• But we can get distracted or listen for the wrong reasons.

• “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” - Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful

Listening versus Hearing

• Listening is a mindful active process of receiving and interpreting messages

• Listening is not the same as hearing

• Hearing is a physiological process of capturing sound conducted by the ears into the brain

• Listening is a skill we can develop

Listening Myths

• Listening is the same as hearing

  • People who are hearing impaired have some form of physical obstruction or structural difference in their ear that impedes the reception of sound. (ex: hearing aids, cochlear implants, surgery)

  • When people are not good listeners, it has more to do with difficulties in concentration

  • Listening is a skill that can be developed and improved through practice and effort.

• I’m a good listener

  • People overestimate how good they are at listening, and underestimate how good others are at listening

  • When we believe we’re going at something, we tend to not work at it, and so when we overestimate our own listening abilities, we don’t work to improve our listening skills

  • Work at being a better listener

• Effective listening is hard to learn

  • The challenge is putting the skills into consistent practice

  • The most important abilities to develop for good listening are concentration and attention

  • Train yourself to focus and not be easily distracted

• Good listeners are more intelligent

  • Psychologist Howard Gardner has levied some fairly groundbreaking criticisms of IQ tests and how they privilege only two types of knowledge acquisition over the many other ways people learn, while using college or advanced degrees to determine intelligence.

  • The more people believe they know, the more they typically want to speak -- not listen.

• Older people are better listeners

  • With age comes habits, good or bad.

  • Age has little to do with our listening skills

• Women are better listeners than men

  • Women and men perceive themselves to communicate differently

  • According to scholar Deborah Tannen, women tend to communicate through rapport talk. Women listen more in a people-oriented way, meaning they listen with the intention of making a connection with the other person.

  • Men tend to engage in report talk. When they listen to messages, they are more content-oriented, which leads them to listen to more of the substance of a message versus the emotions or relationship elements.

• What is EQ? (p. 101)

  • Emotional intelligence is the ability to assess, identify, and manage his or her own emotions while also appreciating and responding to the emotions of others in a civil manner.

  • Those with high emotional intelligence are other-centered and consequently better listeners than those who cannot pay attention.

  • Emotional intelligence is related to listening ability, while intellect is not.

The Value of Listening Well

• Helps your career

• Saves you time and money

• Creates opportunities

• Strengthens relationships

HURIER Model for Listening by Browning

1. Hearing - taking in cues - sound is first experienced.

2. Understanding - making sense of the cues we take in through our ears & eyes.

3. Remembering - being able to recall and store info for later.

4. Interpreting - take in all cues and make meaning - assumptions can take place here

5. Evaluation - make a judgment about the truth of the message.

6. Responding - feedback; signally to the other that the message has been received, nonverbals and verbals

Purposes (Types) of Listening

• Appreciative listening - enjoyment

• Comprehensive listening - to understand

• Show support - Empathic: https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw

• Critical listening - evaluation

Ways we listen

• Active listening - requires active participation in making choices about selecting, attending, understanding

• Passive listening - failing to make active choices

• Non-listening - (pseudolistening is a type)

• Listening fidelity - how well the listener’s thoughts match those of the message producer

• https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ivytech-comm101-master/chapter/chapter-4-three-as-of-active-listening/

Types of non-listening (Challenges)

• Pseudolistening - we hide our inattention by appearing to actually listen

• Glazing over - we lose complete attention with what’s going on around us and think about something else entirely

• Ambushing - we listen with a goal to attack the weak points of the other person

• Prejudging-attitude - we enter an interaction with a judgment about what we believe will be said before the person has a chance to present it

• Selective attitude - we choose the main points are in a message regardless of what the speaker says

• Advising - we interrupt the person or offer suggestions and opinions when they were not sought

• Internal Noise

  • Barriers to effective listening originating within listener

  • Physiological Barriers - anything physical inside the body interfering with the transactor’s ability to interact effectively

  • Psychological Barriers - moods, attitudes, biases, or daydreaming

• External Noise

  • Any barrier to effective listening that originates outside of the body or mind

  • Environmental Barriers - any part of the environment or surroundings that can prevent communication or getting in touch with another person or something else

    • Ex: time, physical distance, place, space, climate, and noise

  • Linguistic Barriers - features of language use that result in miscomprehension or complete loss in communication

    • Ex: dialects/pidgin, language disabilities, foreign languages, accents, jargon and slang, word choice

Guidelines for Dialogic Listening

• Attend to (adjust the body to be alert and open stance)

• Stop talking!

• Suspend judgment until knowing all the facts

• Make intentional listening a goal

• Remove distractions (exercise with cell phone nap)

• Listen for ideas

• Paraphrase

• Focus on agreement and not disagreement

More on effective listening

7 Effective Ways to Make Others Feel Important

1. Use their name.

2. Express sincere gratitude.

3. Do more listening than talking.

4. Talk more about them than about you.

5. Be authentically interested.

6. Be sincere in your praise.

7. Show you care.

• Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.” - Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Key Terms

1. Hearing - the physiological process of capturing sound conducted by ears to the brain

2. Listening - the process of receiving and interpreting spoken and/or nonverbal messages

3. Emotional intelligence - the ability a person has to assess, identify, and manage his or her own emotions, while also appreciating and responding to the emotions of others in a civil manner

4. Rapport talk - language meant to develop relationships and exchange emotional information

5. Report talk - the exchange of information, solutions, and problem-solving strategies

6. HURIER model - the six steps of listening

7. Listening for appreciation - listening for enjoyment; it is not high in cognitive commitment

8. Listening for comprehension - listening to understand and learn something new; requires a significant degree of mental effort

9. Listening to show support - listening to a speaker to make him or her feel valued and to show the person we care about what he or she has to say

10. Critical listening - listening to evaluate a message and assess whether or not we agree with what is being said; requires the most cognitive effort of any listening purpose

11. Active listening - listening with a high degree of attention to a message; we process, store, and potentially evaluate the content of the message to come to conclusions or an understanding about what was said

12. Passive listening - listening without engaging the topic in any noticeable way, trying only to absorb what is being said

13. Nonlistening - providing the appearance of listening without actually paying attention to the message

14. Pseudolistening - the practice of hiding our inattention by appearing to actually listen through nonverbal and verbal responses that make it appear as though we understand what is being said

15. Glazing over - losing complete attention with what is going and thinking about something else entirely, often staring in a different direction than the speaker

16. Spare brain time - the gap between the roughly 150 words a minute we can speak, and the 650 words per minute we can mentally process

17. Ambushing - the practice of focusing only on the weaknesses of what the other person is saying and ignoring the strengths of his or her position

18. Prejudging - the practice of entering an interaction with a judgment about what we believe will be said before the person has a chance to present it

19. Selective listening - the practice of choosing what the main points are in a message regardless of what the speaker says

20. Advising - the practice of interrupting a person to offer suggestions in an effort to be helpful even when they were not sought