TOPIC 6: LISTENING IN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

• LISTENING

  • the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the brain.
  • leads to the understanding of facts and ideas.
  • It requires concentration, which is the focusing of your thoughts upon one problem.
• Listening can be defined as the process of:

  • Receiving: Hearing and Attending to the message.
  • Understanding: Deciphering meaning from the message you hear.
  • Remembering: Retaining what you hear in memory.
  • Evaluating: Thinking critically about and judging the message.
  • Responding: Answering or giving the feedback to the speaker.
• Listening is never perfect

  • lapses in attention, memory, inadequate critical thinking.
  • misunderstandings.
  • inadequate responding.
• The process of listening: Receiving

  • begins with hearing, the process of receiving the messages the speaker sends.
  • you note not only what is said (verbally or nonverbally) but what is omitted.
• How to improve Receiving Skills?

  • focus your attention on the speaker's verbal and nonverbal messages.
  • avoid distraction in the environment.
  • maintain your role as a listener and avoid interrupting.
• Disclaimer


  statements that aim to ensure that your messages will be understood and will not reflect negatively on you.
• Types of Disclaimer

  1. Hedging: Helps you to separate yourself from the message so that if your listener reject your message, they need not reject you.
  2. Credentialing: helps you establish your special qualification for saying what you’re about to say.
  3. Sin licenses: asks listeners for permission to deviate in some way from some normally accepted convention.
  4. Cognitive disclaimer: help you make the case that you’re in full possession of your faculties.
  5. Appeals for the suspension of judgment: ask listeners to hear you out before making a judgment
• The process of Listening: Understanding


  Is the stage at which you learn what the speaker means, the stage at which you grasp both thoughts and emotions expressed.
• How to improve your understanding ?

  • Avoid assuming you understand what the speaker is going to say before he or she says it.
  • See the speaker’s message from the speaker’s point of view.
  • Ask question for clarification.
  • Paraphrase or rephrase the speakers in your own words
• The process of Listening: Remembering

  • What you remember is not what was said but what you remember said.
  • Memory is reconstructive; you reconstruct the message you hear into a system that makes a sense to you.
  • In order to remember you need to pass from your short-term memory into long term memory.
• Four suggestion form short to long term memory:

  • Focus your attention on the central ideas.
  • Organize what you hear, summarize the messages in a more easily retained form and do not ignore crucial details.
  • Unite the new with the old information.
  • Repeat names and key concepts to yourself.
• The process of Listening: Evaluating


  consists of judging the message in some way.
• Suggestions to consider evaluating the process of listening:

  • Resist evaluation until you fully understand the speaker’s point of view.
  • Distinguish facts from opinions and personal interpretation by the speaker.
  • Identify any biases, self-interests, or prejudice that may lead the speaker to slant unfairly what is said.
• Recognize some of the popular but fallacious forms of reasoning (faulty reasoning/unmistaken belief) speakers may employ (name-calling, testimonial and bandwagon).
• Name-calling


  applying a favorable or unfavorable label to color your perception (for examples: Soft on Terrorism, nerd, environmentalist, fatty, skinny)
• Testimonial


  using positively or negatively viewed spoke-persons to encourage your acceptance or rejection of something (for examples: slimming products, disgraced politician associated with an idea the speaker wants rejected).
• Bandwagon


  arguing that you should believe or do something because “everyone else does” (for example: diet - Azim notices that many of his friends started to consume protein shakes then he decides that his must be the healthy way to eat so he joins them).
• The process of Listening: Responding 


  Occurs in two phases:

  1. Responses you make while the speaker is talking (back-channeling cues).
  2. Responses you make after the speaker has stopped talking (expressing empathy).
• Suggestions for making listening effective:

  • Support the speaker throughout the speaker’s conversation.
  • Own your responses.
  • Resist “responding to another’s feelings” with “solving the person’s problems.
  • Focus on the other person.
  • Avoid being a thought-competing listener
• Listening Barriers

  1. physical and mental distractions
  2. biases and prejudices
  3. racist, heterosexist, ageist, sexist listening.
  4. lack of appropriate focus.
  5. premature judgement.
• Styles of Listening

  1. Empathic & Objective listening
  2. Polite listening
  3. Critical Listening
  4. Active and Inactive Listening
• Emphatic Listening


  to see the world as they see it, to feel what they feel.
• Recommendations for Emphatic Listening:

  • see from the speaker's point of view.
  • engage in equal, two-way conversation.
  • seek to understand both thoughts and feelings.
• Polite Listening

  • often thought of as the exclusive function of the speaker, as solely an encoding or sending function.
  • Politeness may be expressed through your listening behavior.
• Suggestions for demonstrating politeness in listening:

  • Avoid interrupting the speaker.
  • Give supportive listening cues.
  • Show empathy with the speaker.
  • Maintain eye contact.
  • Give positive feedback.
• Critical Listening


  helps you analyze and evaluate the messages.
• Guidelines for critical listening:

  • keep an open mind and avoid prejudging
  • avoid filtering out or oversimplifying complex messages.
  • recognize your own biases.
  • combat the tendency to sharpen.
  • focus on both verbal and nonverbal messages.
  • watch out for language fallacies (unmistaken belief)
• Active and Inactive Listening

  • PET (Parent Effectiveness Training) technique; it is a process of sending back to the speaker what you as a listener think the speaker meant – both in content and in feelings.
  • Putting together your understanding of the speaker’s total message into a meaningful whole.
  • Active listening enables you to check your perceptions and express support while inactive listening accomplishes very little in responding to the speaker
• Functions of Active Listening

  • Help the listener to check their understanding of what the speaker said or what she or he meant.
  • Let the speaker know that you acknowledge and accept his or her feelings.
  • Stimulates the speaker to explore feelings and thoughts. (Avoid “solution messages” (ordering messages; warning and threatening messages; preaching and moralizing messages; advising message.)
• Techniques of Active Listening

  • Paraphrase the speaker meaning
  • Express understanding of the speaker's feeling.
  • Ask questions.
• Paraphrase the speaker's meaning

  • state in your own words what you think the speaker means and feels.
  • be objective.
  • do not overdo paraphrase.
• Express Understanding of the Speaker's Feeling

  • will help you further check your perception of the speaker's feeling.
  • allow the speaker to see his or her feelings more objectively and to elaborate on them.
• Ask Questions

  • to ensue your own understanding of the speaker's thought and feelings and secure additional information.
  • to provide enough stimulation and support for the speaker.