Listening & the Listening Process

• What is listening?


  Listening is an active process involving much more than hearing and seeing. It is a combination of

  • Hearing – physical reception of sound

  • Understanding – interpretation and comprehension of the message

  • Remembering – ability to retain what has been heard

  • Acting – responding by either action or inaction.
• What are the stages of the listening process?

  1)Listening Preparation

  2) Receiving

  3) Constructing meaning

  4) Responding

  5) Remembering
• What are suggestions to effective listening?

  💗Minimize environmental and mental distractions

  💗Get in touch with the speaker

  💗Let the speaker know you are actively involved

  💗Do not interrupt the speaker
• What is listening preparation?


  Creating a readiness to listen.
• What is receiving?


  is the process of taking in, acquiring or accepting. It occurs through the various senses (hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting) and happens within sender- receivers as they receive all the cues, signals and impulses.
• What is constructing meaning?

  is the process of making sense of the cues, signals and impulses received (ie decoding). It goes on in the brains of the sender-receivers. Significant aspects of constructing meaning involve focusing your attention on the message, selective attention and deciding the relevancy of the message.
• What is responding?


  means using spoken or non-verbal messages to exchange ideas and convey information (considering what would be the appropriate response)
• What is remembering?


  is using a number of strategies to ensure that information is learned and stored securely in your memory. There are a number of ways to remember information but the four major ones are:

  💗 Organization – finding a pattern, structure, order or format to help remembering

  💗 Association – make something you want to remember relate to something you already know

  💗 Visualization – picturing what you want to remember creates a strong, vivid memory of it

  💗 Repetition – when you repeat information you tend to retain it more
• What are physical listening barriers?


  • Hearing impairment

  • Noisy surroundings

  • Speakers appearance

  • Speakers mannerisms
• What are the mental listening barriers.


  • Inattention

  • Prejudgement

  • Frame of reference – interpretation of a message is affected by your culture, education and social frames of reference.

  • Closed mindedness
• How can you improve listening in the workplace?

  • Stop talking

  • Control external and internal distractions

  • Become actively involved

  • Separate facts from opinions

  • Identify important facts

  • Ask clarifying questions

  • Paraphrase to increase understanding

  • Take notes to ensure retention’

  • Beware of gender differences
• What are some guidelines for listening to customers?

  • Defer judgement

  • Listen completely listen primarily for the main idea. Avoid responding to sidetracking issues

  • Do only one thing at a time

  • Control your emotions

  • Be silent for a moment after the customer finishes

  • Make affirming statement and invite additional comments
• What are the barriers to effective listening?

  💗 Boredom- lack of interest in the subject

  💗 Cognitive Dissonance- occurs when you feel conflict because you hold two or more attitudes that are in opposition to each other

  💗 Anxiety

  💗 Control

  💗 Passiveness– to learn requires serious and concerted effort
• What are the types of listening styles?

  1)people listening

  2) action listening

  3) content listening

  4) time-style
• Define the people listening style.


  – this style involves concern for the other person’s feelings. You look for common interests with others and respond to emotions
• Define the action listening style.


  -the listener prefers error free information that is simple and concise
• Define the content listening style.

  -the listener prefers complex and challenging information. listen carefully for information, analyse it and draw a reasonable conclusion.
• Define time-style listening.


  – the listener prefers brief and hurried interaction with others; often let others know how much time they have to make the point
• What are the types of listening?


  💗 active listening

  💗 critical listening

  💗 empathic listening
• What is active listening?


  refers to listening for information and actively participating in the conversation
• What is critical listening?

  Listening carefully for information, analyse it and draw a reasonable conclusion (how, what, when, where, why)
• What is empathic listening?

  listening with empathy and recognising person's feelings and relating to others