Discussion
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Chapter 5
Listening
In our sender-oriented society, listening is often overlooked as an important part
of the communication process. Yet research shows that adults spend about 45
percent of their time listening, which is more than any other communicative
activity. In some contexts, we spend even more time listening than that. On
average, workers spend 55 percent of their workday listening, and managers
spend about 63 percent of their day listening.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal
Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice(London: Routledge, 2011), 177.
Listening is a primary means through which we learn new information, which can
help us meet instrumental needs as we learn things that helps us complete
certain tasks at work or school and get things done in general. The act of listening
to our relational partners provides support, which is an important part of
relational maintenance and helps us meet our relational needs. Listening to what
others say about us helps us develop an accurate self-concept, which can help us
more strategically communicate for identity needs in order to project to others
our desired self. Overall, improving our listening skills can help us be better
students, better relational partners, and more successful professionals.
5.1 Understanding How and Why We Listen
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Describe the stages of the listening process.
2. Discuss the four main types of listening.
3. Compare and contrast the four main listening styles.
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Listening is the learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating,
and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. We begin to engage with the
listening process long before we engage in any recognizable verbal or nonverbal
communication. It is only after listening for months as infants that we begin to
consciously practice our own forms of expression. In this section we will learn
more about each stage of the listening process, the main types of listening, and
the main listening styles.
The Listening Process
Listening is a process and as such doesn’t have a defined start and finish. Like the
communication process, listening has cognitive, behavioral, and relational
elements and doesn’t unfold in a linear, step-by-step fashion. Models of processes
are informative in that they help us visualize specific components, but keep in
mind that they do not capture the speed, overlapping nature, or overall
complexity of the actual process in action. The stages of the listening process are
receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding.
Receiving
Before we can engage other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli
through our senses. In any given communication encounter, it is likely that we
will return to the receiving stage many times as we process incoming feedback
and new messages. This part of the listening process is more physiological than
other parts, which include cognitive and relational elements. We primarily take in
information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although
we don’t often think about visual cues as a part of listening, they influence how
we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their
voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from facial expressions and eye contact.
The fact that these visual cues are missing in e-mail, text, and phone interactions
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presents some difficulties for reading contextual clues into meaning received
through only auditory channels.
Our chapter on perception discusses some of the ways in which incoming stimuli
are filtered. These perceptual filters also play a role in listening. Some stimuli
never make it in, some are filtered into subconsciousness, and others are filtered
into various levels of consciousness based on their salience. Recall that salience is
the degree to which something attracts our attention in a particular context and
that we tend to find salient things that are visually or audibly stimulating and
things that meet our needs or interests. Think about how it’s much easier to listen
to a lecture on a subject that you find very interesting.
It is important to consider noise as a factor that influences how we receive
messages. Some noise interferes primarily with hearing, which is the physical
process of receiving stimuli through internal and external components of the ears
and eyes, and some interferes with listening, which is the cognitive process of
processing the stimuli taken in during hearing. While hearing leads to listening,
they are not the same thing. Environmental noise such as other people talking,
the sounds of traffic, and music interfere with the physiological aspects of
hearing. Psychological noise like stress and anger interfere primarily with the
cognitive processes of listening. We can enhance our ability to receive, and in
turn listen, by trying to minimize noise.
Interpreting
During the interpreting stage of listening, we combine the visual and auditory
information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information using
schemata. The interpreting stage engages cognitive and relational processing as
we take in informational, contextual, and relational cues and try to connect them
in meaningful ways to previous experiences. It is through the interpreting stage
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that we may begin to understand the stimuli we have received. When we
understand something, we are able to attach meaning by connecting information
to previous experiences. Through the process of comparing new information with
old information, we may also update or revise particular schemata if we find the
new information relevant and credible. If we have difficulty interpreting
information, meaning we don’t have previous experience or information in our
existing schemata to make sense of it, then it is difficult to transfer the
information into our long-term memory for later recall. In situations where
understanding the information we receive isn’t important or isn’t a goal, this
stage may be fairly short or even skipped. After all, we can move something to our
long-term memory by repetition and then later recall it without ever having
understood it. I remember earning perfect scores on exams in my anatomy class
in college because I was able to memorize and recall, for example, all the organs
in the digestive system. In fact, I might still be able to do that now over a decade
later. But neither then nor now could I tell you the significance or function of
most of those organs, meaning I didn’t really get to a level of understanding but
simply stored the information for later recall.
Recalling
Our ability to recall information is dependent on some of the physiological limits
of how memory works. Overall, our memories are known to be fallible. We forget
about half of what we hear immediately after hearing it, recall 35 percent after
eight hours, and recall 20 percent after a day.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal
Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 189–
99. Our memory consists of multiple “storage units,” including sensory storage,
short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory.Owen
Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 184.
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Our sensory storage is very large in terms of capacity but limited in terms of
length of storage. We can hold large amounts of unsorted visual information but
only for about a tenth of a second. By comparison, we can hold large amounts of
unsorted auditory information for longer—up to four seconds. This initial
memory storage unit doesn’t provide much use for our study of communication,
as these large but quickly expiring chunks of sensory data are primarily used in
reactionary and instinctual ways.
As stimuli are organized and interpreted, they make their way to short-term
memory where they either expire and are forgotten or are transferred to long-
term memory. Short-term memory is a mental storage capability that can retain
stimuli for twenty seconds to one minute. Long-term memory is 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.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory,
and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 184. Working memory is a temporarily
accessed memory storage space that is activated during times of high cognitive
demand. When using working memory, we can temporarily store information
and process and use it at the same time. This is different from our typical
memory function in that information usually has to make it to long-term memory
before we can call it back up to apply to a current situation. People with good
working memories are able to keep recent information in mind and process it and
apply it to other incoming information. This can be very useful during high-stress
situations. A person in control of a command center like the White House
Situation Room should have a good working memory in order to take in,
organize, evaluate, and then immediately use new information instead of having
to wait for that information to make it to long-term memory and then be
retrieved and used.
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Although recall is an important part of the listening process, there isn’t a direct
correlation between being good at recalling information and being a good
listener. Some people have excellent memories and recall abilities and can tell
you a very accurate story from many years earlier during a situation in which they
should actually be listening and not showing off their recall abilities. Recall is an
important part of the listening process because it is most often used to assess
listening abilities and effectiveness. Many quizzes and tests in school are based
on recall and are often used to assess how well students comprehended
information presented in class, which is seen as an indication of how well they
listened. When recall is our only goal, we excel at it. Experiments have found that
people can memorize and later recall a set of faces and names with near 100
percent recall when sitting in a quiet lab and asked to do so. But throw in external
noise, more visual stimuli, and multiple contextual influences, and we can’t
remember the name of the person we were just introduced to one minute earlier.
Even in interpersonal encounters, we rely on recall to test whether or not
someone was listening. Imagine that Azam is talking to his friend Belle, who is
sitting across from him in a restaurant booth. Azam, annoyed that Belle keeps
checking her phone, stops and asks, “Are you listening?” Belle inevitably replies,
“Yes,” since we rarely fess up to our poor listening habits, and Azam replies,
“Well, what did I just say?”
Evaluating
When we evaluate something, we make judgments about its credibility,
completeness, and worth. In terms of credibility, we try to determine the degree
to which we believe a speaker’s statements are correct and/or true. In terms of
completeness, we try to “read between the lines” and evaluate the message in
relation to what we know about the topic or situation being discussed. We
evaluate the worth of a message by making a value judgment about whether we
think the message or idea is good/bad, right/wrong, or desirable/undesirable. All
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these aspects of evaluating require critical thinking skills, which we aren’t born
with but must develop over time through our own personal and intellectual
development.
Studying communication is a great way to build your critical thinking skills,
because you learn much more about the taken-for-granted aspects of how
communication works, which gives you tools to analyze and critique messages,
senders, and contexts. Critical thinking and listening skills also help you take a
more proactive role in the communication process rather than being a passive
receiver of messages that may not be credible, complete, or worthwhile. One
danger within the evaluation stage of listening is to focus your evaluative lenses
more on the speaker than the message. This can quickly become a barrier to
effective listening if we begin to prejudge a speaker based on his or her identity or
characteristics rather than on the content of his or her message. We will learn
more about how to avoid slipping into a person-centered rather than message-
centered evaluative stance later in the chapter.
Responding
Responding entails sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate
attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof. From our earlier discussion of
the communication model, you may be able to connect this part of the listening
process to feedback. Later, we will learn more specifics about how to encode and
decode the verbal and nonverbal cues sent during the responding stage, but we all
know from experience some signs that indicate whether a person is paying
attention and understanding a message or not.
We send verbal and nonverbal feedback while another person is talking and after
they are done. Back-channel cues are the verbal and nonverbal signals we send
while someone is talking and can consist of verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “oh,” and
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“right,” and/or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning
forward. Back-channel cues are generally a form of positive feedback that
indicates others are actively listening. People also send cues intentionally and
unintentionally that indicate they aren’t listening. If another person is looking
away, fidgeting, texting, or turned away, we will likely interpret those responses
negatively.
Paraphrasing is a responding behavior that can also show that you understand
what was communicated. When you paraphrase information, you rephrase the
message into your own words. For example, you might say the following to start
off a paraphrased response: “What I heard you say was…” or “It seems like you’re
saying…” You can also ask clarifying questions to get more information. It is often
a good idea to pair a paraphrase with a question to keep a conversation flowing.
For example, you might pose the following paraphrase and question pair: “It
seems like you believe you were treated unfairly. Is that right?” Or you might ask
a standalone question like “What did your boss do that made you think he was
‘playing favorites?’” Make sure to paraphrase and/or ask questions once a
person’s turn is over, because interrupting can also be interpreted as a sign of not
listening. Paraphrasing is also a good tool to use in computer-mediated
communication, especially since miscommunication can occur due to a lack of
nonverbal and other contextual cues.
The Importance of Listening
Understanding how listening works provides the foundation we need to explore
why we listen, including various types and styles of listening. In general, listening
helps us achieve all the communication goals (physical, instrumental, relational,
and identity) that we learned about in Chapter 1 "Introduction to Communication
Studies". Listening is also important in academic, professional, and personal
contexts.
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In terms of academics, poor listening skills were shown to contribute significantly
to failure in a person’s first year of college.Wendy S. Zabava and Andrew D.
Wolvin, “The Differential Impact of a Basic Communication Course on Perceived
Communication Competencies in Class, Work, and Social
Contexts,” Communication Education 42 (1993): 215–17. In general, students
with high scores for listening ability have greater academic achievement.
Interpersonal communication skills including listening are also highly sought
after by potential employers, consistently ranking in the top ten in national
surveys.National Association of Colleges and Employers, Job Outlook
2011 (2010): 25.
Poor listening skills, lack of conciseness, and inability to give constructive
feedback have been identified as potential communication challenges in
professional contexts. Even though listening education is lacking in our society,
research has shown that introductory communication courses provide important
skills necessary for functioning in entry-level jobs, including listening, writing,
motivating/persuading, interpersonal skills, informational interviewing, and
small-group problem solving.Vincent S. DiSalvo, “A Summary of Current
Research Identifying Communication Skills in Various Organizational
Contexts,” Communication Education 29 (1980), 283–90. Training and
improvements in listening will continue to pay off, as employers desire employees
with good communication skills, and employees who have good listening skills
are more likely to get promoted.
Listening also has implications for our personal lives and relationships. We
shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to make someone else feel better
and to open our perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic
listening can help us expand our self and social awareness by learning from other
people’s experiences and by helping us take on different perspectives. Emotional
support in the form of empathetic listening and validation during times of
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conflict can help relational partners manage common stressors of relationships
that may otherwise lead a partnership to deteriorate.Robert M. Milardo and
Heather Helms-Erikson, “Network Overlap and Third-Party Influence in Close
Relationships,” in Close Relationships: A Sourcebook, eds. Clyde Hendrick and
Susan S. Hendrick (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 37. The following list
reviews some of the main functions of listening that are relevant in multiple
contexts.
The main purposes of listening areOwen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal
Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 182.
• to focus on messages sent by other people or noises coming from our
surroundings;
• to better our understanding of other people’s communication;
• to critically evaluate other people’s messages;
• to monitor nonverbal signals;
• to indicate that we are interested or paying attention;
• to empathize with others and show we care for them (relational
maintenance); and
• to engage in negotiation, dialogue, or other exchanges that result in shared
understanding of or agreement on an issue.
Listening Types
Listening serves many purposes, and different situations require different types
of listening. The type of listening we engage in affects our communication and
how others respond to us. For example, when we listen to empathize with others,
our communication will likely be supportive and open, which will then lead the
other person to feel “heard” and supported and hopefully view the interaction
positively.Graham D. Bodie and William A. Villaume, “Aspects of Receiving
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Information: The Relationships between Listening Preferences, Communication
Apprehension, Receiver Apprehension, and Communicator Style,” International
Journal of Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 48. The main types of listening we will
discuss are discriminative, informational, critical, and empathetic.Kittie W.
Watson, Larry L. Barker, and James B. Weaver III, “The Listening Styles Profile
(LS-16): Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Four Listening
Styles,” International Journal of Listening 9 (1995): 1–13.
Discriminative Listening
Discriminative listening is a focused and usually instrumental type of listening
that is primarily physiological and occurs mostly at the receiving stage of the
listening process. Here we engage in listening to scan and monitor our
surroundings in order to isolate particular auditory or visual stimuli. For
example, we may focus our listening on a dark part of the yard while walking the
dog at night to determine if the noise we just heard presents us with any danger.
Or we may look for a particular nonverbal cue to let us know our conversational
partner received our message.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction:
Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 185. In the absence
of a hearing impairment, we have an innate and physiological ability to engage in
discriminative listening. Although this is the most basic form of listening, it
provides the foundation on which more intentional listening skills are built. This
type of listening can be refined and honed. Think of how musicians, singers, and
mechanics exercise specialized discriminative listening to isolate specific aural
stimuli and how actors, detectives, and sculptors discriminate visual cues that
allow them to analyze, make meaning from, or recreate nuanced
behavior.Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley, “A Listening
Taxonomy,” in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn
Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 18–19.
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Informational Listening
Informational listening entails listening with the goal of comprehending and
retaining information. This type of listening is not evaluative and is common in
teaching and learning contexts ranging from a student listening to an informative
speech to an out-of-towner listening to directions to the nearest gas station. We
also use informational listening when we listen to news reports, voice mail, and
briefings at work. Since retention and recall are important components of
informational listening, good concentration and memory skills are key. These
also happen to be skills that many college students struggle with, at least in the
first years of college, but will be expected to have mastered once they get into
professional contexts. In many professional contexts, informational listening is
important, especially when receiving instructions. I caution my students that they
will be expected to process verbal instructions more frequently in their profession
than they are in college. Most college professors provide detailed instructions and
handouts with assignments so students can review them as needed, but many
supervisors and managers will expect you to take the initiative to remember or
record vital information. Additionally, many bosses are not as open to questions
or requests to repeat themselves as professors are.
Critical Listening
Critical listening entails listening with the goal of analyzing or evaluating a
message based on information presented verbally and information that can be
inferred from context. A critical listener evaluates a message and accepts it,
rejects it, or decides to withhold judgment and seek more information. As
constant consumers of messages, we need to be able to assess the credibility of
speakers and their messages and identify various persuasive appeals and faulty
logic (known as fallacies), which you can learn more about in Chapter 11
"Informative and Persuasive Speaking". Critical listening is important during
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persuasive exchanges, but I recommend always employing some degree of critical
listening, because you may find yourself in a persuasive interaction that you
thought was informative. As is noted in Chapter 4 "Nonverbal Communication",
people often disguise inferences as facts. Critical-listening skills are useful when
listening to a persuasive speech in this class and when processing any of the
persuasive media messages we receive daily. You can see judges employ critical
listening, with varying degrees of competence, on talent competition shows
like Rupaul’s Drag Race, America’s Got Talent, and The Voice. While the
exchanges between judge and contestant on these shows is expected to be
subjective and critical, critical listening is also important when listening to
speakers that have stated or implied objectivity, such as parents, teachers,
political leaders, doctors, and religious leaders. We will learn more about how to
improve your critical thinking skills later in this chapter.
Empathetic Listening
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. While the
word empathy means to “feel into” or “feel with” another
person,sympathy means to “feel for” someone. Sympathy is generally more self-
oriented and distant than empathy.Tom Bruneau, “Empathy and Listening,”
in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley
(Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 188.Empathetic listening is
other oriented and should be genuine. Because of our own centrality in our
perceptual world, empathetic listening can be difficult. It’s often much easier for
us to tell our own story or to give advice than it is to really listen to and empathize
with someone else. We should keep in mind that sometimes others just need to
be heard and our feedback isn’t actually desired.
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Empathetic listening is key for dialogue and helps maintain interpersonal
relationships. In order to reach dialogue, people must have a degree of open-
mindedness and a commitment to civility that allows them to be empathetic
while still allowing them to believe in and advocate for their own position. An
excellent example of critical and empathetic listening in action is the
international Truth and Reconciliation movement. The most well-known example
of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) occurred in South Africa as a
way to address the various conflicts that occurred during apartheid.Department
of Justice and Constitutional Development, Truth and Reconciliation
Commission website, accessed July 13, 2012,http://www.justice.gov.za/trc. The
first TRC in the United States occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, as a
means of processing the events and aftermath of November 3, 1979, when
members of the Ku Klux Klan shot and killed five members of the Communist
Worker’s Party during a daytime confrontation witnessed by news crews and
many bystanders. The goal of such commissions is to allow people to tell their
stories, share their perspectives in an open environment, and be listened to. The
Greensboro TRC states its purpose as such:“About,” Greensboro Truth and
Reconciliation Commission website, accessed July 13,
2012, http://www.greensborotrc.org/truth_reconciliation.php.
The truth and reconciliation process seeks to heal relations between opposing
sides by uncovering all pertinent facts, distinguishing truth from lies, and
allowing for acknowledgement, appropriate public mourning, forgiveness and
healing…The focus often is on giving victims, witnesses and even perpetrators a
chance to publicly tell their stories without fear of prosecution.
Listening Styles
Just as there are different types of listening, there are also different styles of
listening. People may be categorized as one or more of the following listeners:
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people-oriented, action-oriented, content-oriented, and time-oriented listeners.
Research finds that 40 percent of people have more than one preferred listening
style, and that they choose a style based on the listening situation.Graham D.
Bodie and William A. Villaume, “Aspects of Receiving Information: The
Relationships between Listening Preferences, Communication Apprehension,
Receiver Apprehension, and Communicator Style,”International Journal of
Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 50. Other research finds that people often still revert
back to a single preferred style in times of emotional or cognitive stress, even if
they know a different style of listening would be better.Debra L. Worthington,
“Exploring the Relationship between Listening Style Preference and
Personality,” International Journal of Listening 17, no. 1 (2003): 82.Following a
brief overview of each listening style, we will explore some of their applications,
strengths, and weaknesses.
• People-oriented listeners are concerned about the needs and feelings
of others and may get distracted from a specific task or the content of a
message in order to address feelings.
• Action-oriented listeners prefer well-organized, precise, and accurate
information. They can become frustrated with they perceive
communication to be unorganized or inconsistent, or a speaker to be
“long-winded.”
• Content-oriented listeners are analytic and enjoy processing complex
messages. They like in-depth information and like to learn about multiple
sides of a topic or hear multiple perspectives on an issue. Their
thoroughness can be difficult to manage if there are time constraints.
• Time-oriented listeners are concerned with completing tasks and
achieving goals. They do not like information perceived as irrelevant and
like to stick to a timeline. They may cut people off and make quick
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decisions (taking short cuts or cutting corners) when they think they have
enough information.
People-Oriented Listeners
People-oriented listeners are concerned about the emotional states of others and
listen with the purpose of offering support in interpersonal relationships. People-
oriented listeners can be characterized as “supporters” who are caring and
understanding. These listeners are sought out because they are known as people
who will “lend an ear.” They may or may not be valued for the advice they give,
but all people often want is a good listener. This type of listening may be
especially valuable in interpersonal communication involving emotional
exchanges, as a person-oriented listener can create a space where people can
make themselves vulnerable without fear of being cut off or judged. People-
oriented listeners are likely skilled empathetic listeners and may find success in
supportive fields like counseling, social work, or nursing. Interestingly, such
fields are typically feminized, in that people often associate the characteristics of
people-oriented listeners with roles filled by women. We will learn more about
how gender and listening intersect in Section 5 "Listening and Gender".
Action-Oriented Listeners
Action-oriented listeners 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.
These listeners are frustrated by disorganization, because it detracts from the
possibility of actually doing something. Action-oriented listeners can be thought
of as “builders”—like an engineer, a construction site foreperson, or a skilled
project manager. This style of listening can be very effective when a task needs to
be completed under time, budgetary, or other logistical constraints. One research
study found that people prefer an action-oriented style of listening in
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instructional contexts.Margarete Imhof, “Who Are We as We Listen? Individual
Listening Profiles in Varying Contexts,” International Journal of Listening 18,
no. 1 (2004): 39. In other situations, such as interpersonal communication,
action-oriented listeners may not actually be very interested in listening, instead
taking a “What do you want me to do?” approach. A friend and colleague of mine
who exhibits some qualities of an action-oriented listener once told me about an
encounter she had with a close friend who had a stillborn baby. My friend said
she immediately went into “action mode.” Although it was difficult for her to
connect with her friend at an emotional/empathetic level, she was able to use her
action-oriented approach to help out in other ways as she helped make funeral
arrangements, coordinated with other family and friends, and handled the details
that accompanied this tragic emotional experience. As you can see from this
example, the action-oriented listening style often contrasts with the people-
oriented listening style.
Content-Oriented Listeners
Content-oriented listeners like to listen to complex information and evaluate the
content of a message, often from multiple perspectives, before drawing
conclusions. These listeners can be thought of as “learners,” and they also ask
questions to solicit more information to fill out their understanding of an issue.
Content-oriented listeners often enjoy high perceived credibility because of their
thorough, balanced, and objective approach to engaging with information.
Content-oriented listeners are likely skilled informational and critical listeners
and may find success in academic careers in the humanities, social sciences, or
sciences. Ideally, judges and politicians would also possess these characteristics.
Time-Oriented Listeners
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Time-oriented listeners are more concerned about time limits and timelines than
they are with the content or senders of a message. These listeners can be thought
of as “executives,” and they tend to actually verbalize the time constraints under
which they are operating.
For example, a time-oriented supervisor may say the following to an employee
who has just entered his office and asked to talk: “Sure, I can talk, but I only have
about five minutes.” These listeners may also exhibit nonverbal cues that indicate
time and/or attention shortages, such as looking at a clock, avoiding eye contact,
or nonverbally trying to close down an interaction. Time-oriented listeners are
also more likely to interrupt others, which may make them seem insensitive to
emotional/personal needs. People often get action-oriented and time-oriented
listeners confused. Action-oriented listeners would be happy to get to a
conclusion or decision quickly if they perceive that they are acting on well-
organized and accurate information. They would, however, not mind taking
longer to reach a conclusion when dealing with a complex topic, and they would
delay making a decision if the information presented to them didn’t meet their
standards of organization. Unlike time-oriented listeners, action-oriented
listeners are not as likely to cut people off (especially if people are presenting
relevant information) and are not as likely to take short cuts.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
• Getting integrated: Listening is a learned process and skill that we can improve
on with concerted effort. Improving our listening skills can benefit us in
academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.
• Listening is the process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and
responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. In the receiving stage, we select
and attend to various stimuli based on salience. We then interpret auditory and
visual stimuli in order to make meaning out of them based on our existing
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schemata. Short-term and long-term memory store stimuli until they are
discarded or processed for later recall. We then evaluate the credibility,
completeness, and worth of a message before responding with verbal and
nonverbal signals.
• Discriminative listening is the most basic form of listening, and we use it to
distinguish between and focus on specific sounds. We use informational listening
to try to comprehend and retain information. Through critical listening, we
analyze and evaluate messages at various levels. We use empathetic listening to
try to understand or experience what a speaker is feeling.
• People-oriented listeners are concerned with others’ needs and feelings, which
may distract from a task or the content of a message. Action-oriented listeners
prefer listening to well-organized and precise information and are more
concerned about solving an issue than they are about supporting the speaker.
Content-oriented listeners enjoy processing complicated information and are
typically viewed as credible because they view an issue from multiple
perspectives before making a decision. Although content-oriented listeners may
not be very effective in situations with time constraints, time-oriented listeners
are fixated on time limits and listen in limited segments regardless of the
complexity of the information or the emotions involved, which can make them
appear cold and distant to some.
E X E R C I S E S
1. The recalling stage of the listening process is a place where many people
experience difficulties. What techniques do you use or could you use to improve
your recall of certain information such as people’s names, key concepts from
your classes, or instructions or directions given verbally?
2. Getting integrated: Identify how critical listening might be useful for you in each
of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic.
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3. Listening scholars have noted that empathetic listening is the most difficult type
of listening. Do you agree? Why or why not?
4. Which style of listening best describes you and why? Which style do you have the
most difficulty with or like the least and why?
5.2 Barriers to Effective Listening
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Discuss some of the environmental and physical barriers to effective listening.
2. Explain how cognitive and personal factors can present barriers to effective
listening.
3. Discuss common bad listening practices.
Barriers to effective listening are present at every stage of the listening
process.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 200. At the receiving stage, noise can block
or distort incoming stimuli. At the interpreting stage, complex or abstract
information may be difficult to relate to previous experiences, making it difficult
to reach understanding. At the recalling stage, natural limits to our memory and
challenges to concentration can interfere with remembering. At the evaluating
stage, personal biases and prejudices can lead us to block people out or assume
we know what they are going to say. At the responding stage, a lack of
paraphrasing and questioning skills can lead to misunderstanding. In the
following section, we will explore how environmental and physical factors,
cognitive and personal factors, and bad listening practices present barriers to
effective listening.
Environmental and Physical Barriers to Listening
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Environmental factors such as lighting, temperature, and furniture affect our
ability to listen. A room that is too dark can make us sleepy, just as a room that is
too warm or cool can raise awareness of our physical discomfort to a point that it
is distracting. Some seating arrangements facilitate listening, while others
separate people. In general, listening is easier when listeners can make direct eye
contact with and are in close physical proximity to a speaker. You may recall
from Chapter 4 "Nonverbal Communication" that when group members are
allowed to choose a leader, they often choose the person who is sitting at the
center or head of the table.Peter A. Andersen, Nonverbal Communication:
Forms and Functions (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999), 57–58. Even though
the person may not have demonstrated any leadership abilities, people
subconsciously gravitate toward speakers that are nonverbally accessible. The
ability to effectively see and hear a person increases people’s confidence in their
abilities to receive and process information. Eye contact and physical proximity
can still be affected by noise. As we learned in Chapter 1 "Introduction to
Communication Studies", environmental noises such as a whirring air
conditioner, barking dogs, or a ringing fire alarm can obviously interfere with
listening despite direct lines of sight and well-placed furniture.
Physiological noise, like environmental noise, can interfere with our ability to
process incoming information. This is considered a physical barrier to effective
listening because it emanates from our physical body. Physiological noise is noise
stemming from a physical illness, injury, or bodily stress. Ailments such as a cold,
a broken leg, a headache, or a poison ivy outbreak can range from annoying to
unbearably painful and impact our listening relative to their intensity. Another
type of noise, psychological noise, bridges physical and cognitive barriers to
effective listening. Psychological noise, or noise stemming from our psychological
states including moods and level of arousal, can facilitate or impede listening.
Any mood or state of arousal, positive or negative, that is too far above or below
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our regular baseline creates a barrier to message reception and processing. The
generally positive emotional state of being in love can be just as much of a barrier
as feeling hatred. Excited arousal can also distract as much as anxious arousal.
Stress about an upcoming events ranging from losing a job, to having surgery, to
wondering about what to eat for lunch can overshadow incoming messages.
While we will explore cognitive barriers to effective listening more in the next
section, psychological noise is relevant here given that the body and mind are not
completely separate. In fact, they can interact in ways that further interfere with
listening. Fatigue, for example, is usually a combination of psychological and
physiological stresses that manifests as stress (psychological noise) and
weakness, sleepiness, and tiredness (physiological noise). Additionally, mental
anxiety (psychological noise) can also manifest itself in our bodies through
trembling, sweating, blushing, or even breaking out in rashes (physiological
noise).
Cognitive and Personal Barriers to Listening
Aside from the barriers to effective listening that may be present in the
environment or emanate from our bodies, cognitive limits, a lack of listening
preparation, difficult or disorganized messages, and prejudices can interfere with
listening. Whether you call it multitasking, daydreaming, glazing over, or drifting
off, we all cognitively process other things while receiving messages. If you think
of your listening mind as a wall of ten televisions, you may notice that in some
situations five of the ten televisions are tuned into one channel. If that one
channel is a lecture being given by your professor, then you are exerting about
half of your cognitive processing abilities on one message. In another situation,
all ten televisions may be on different channels. The fact that we have the
capability to process more than one thing at a time offers some advantages and
disadvantages. But unless we can better understand how our cognitive capacities
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and personal preferences affect our listening, we are likely to experience more
barriers than benefits.
Difference between Speech and Thought Rate
Our ability to process more information than what comes from one speaker or
source creates a barrier to effective listening. While people speak at a rate of 125
to 175 words per minute, we can process between 400 and 800 words per
minute.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 195. This gap between speech rate and
thought rate gives us an opportunity to side-process any number of thoughts that
can be distracting from a more important message. Because of this gap, it is
impossible to give one message our “undivided attention,” but we can occupy
other channels in our minds with thoughts related to the central message. For
example, using some of your extra cognitive processing abilities to repeat,
rephrase, or reorganize messages coming from one source allows you to use that
extra capacity in a way that reinforces the primary message.
The difference between speech and thought rate connects to personal barriers to
listening, as personal concerns are often the focus of competing thoughts that can
take us away from listening and challenge our ability to concentrate on others’
messages. Two common barriers to concentration are self-centeredness and lack
of motivation.Judi Brownell, “Listening Environment: A Perspective,”
inPerspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley
(Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 245. For example, when our
self-consciousness is raised, we may be too busy thinking about how we look, how
we’re sitting, or what others think of us to be attentive to an incoming message.
Additionally, we are often challenged when presented with messages that we do
not find personally relevant. In general, we employ selective attention, which
refers to our tendency to pay attention to the messages that benefit us in some
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way and filter others out. So the student who is checking his or her Twitter feed
during class may suddenly switch his or her attention back to the previously
ignored professor when the following words are spoken: “This will be important
for the exam.”
Another common barrier to effective listening that stems from the speech and
thought rate divide is response preparation. Response preparationrefers to our
tendency to rehearse what we are going to say next while a speaker is still talking.
Rehearsal of what we will say once a speaker’s turn is over is an important part of
the listening process that takes place between the recalling and evaluation and/or
the evaluation and responding stage. Rehearsal becomes problematic when
response preparation begins as someone is receiving a message and hasn’t had
time to engage in interpretation or recall. In this sense, we are listening with the
goal of responding instead of with the goal of understanding, which can lead us to
miss important information that could influence our response.
“Getting Plugged In”
Technology, Multitasking, and Listening
Do you like to listen to music while you do homework? Do you clean your
apartment while talking to your mom on the phone? Do you think students
should be allowed to use laptops in all college classrooms? Your answers to these
questions will point to your preferences for multitasking. If you answered “yes” to
most of them, then you are in line with the general practices of the “net
generation” of digital natives for whom multitasking, especially with various
forms of media, is a way of life. Multitasking is a concept that has been around for
a while and emerged along with the increasing expectation that we will fill
multiple role demands throughout the day. Multitasking can be pretty
straightforward and beneficial—for example, if we listen to motivating music
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while working out. But multitasking can be very inefficient, especially when one
or more of our concurrent tasks are complex or unfamiliar to us.Fleura Bardhi,
Andres J. Rohm, and Fareena Sultan, “Tuning in and Tuning out: Media
Multitasking among Young Consumers,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9
(2010): 318.
Media multitasking specifically refers to the use of multiple forms of media at the
same time, and it can have positive and negative effects on listening.Fleura
Bardhi, Andres J. Rohm, and Fareena Sultan, “Tuning in and Tuning out: Media
Multitasking among Young Consumers,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9
(2010): 322. The negative effects of media multitasking have received much
attention in recent years, as people question the decreasing attention span within
our society. Media multitasking may promote inefficiency, because it can lead to
distractions and plays a prominent role for many in procrastination. The
numerous options for media engagement that we have can also lead to a feeling
of chaos as our attention is pulled in multiple directions, creating a general sense
of disorder. And many of us feel a sense of enslavement when we engage in media
multitasking, as we feel like we can’t live without certain personal media outlets.
Media multitasking can also give people a sense of control, as they use multiple
technologies to access various points of information to solve a problem or
complete a task. An employee may be able to use her iPad to look up information
needed to address a concern raised during a business meeting. She could then e-
mail that link to the presenter, who could share it with the room through his
laptop and a LCD projector. Media multitasking can also increase efficiency, as
people can carry out tasks faster. The links to videos and online articles that I’ve
included in this textbook allow readers like you to quickly access additional
information about a particular subject to prepare for a presentation or complete a
paper assignment. Media multitasking can also increase engagement. Aside from
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just reading material in a textbook, students can now access information through
an author’s blog or Twitter account.
Media multitasking can produce an experience that feels productive, but is it
really? What are the consequences of our media- and technology-saturated
world? Although many of us like to think that we’re good multitaskers, some
research indicates otherwise. For example, student laptop use during class has
been connected to lower academic performance.Carrie B. Fried, “In-Class Laptop
Use and Its Effects on Student Learning,” Computers and Education 50 (2008):
906–14. This is because media multitasking has the potential to interfere with
listening at multiple stages of the process. The study showed that laptop use
interfered with receiving, as students using them reported that they paid less
attention to the class lectures. This is because students used the laptops for
purposes other than taking notes or exploring class content. Of the students using
laptops, 81 percent checked e-mail during lectures, 68 percent used instant
messaging, and 43 percent surfed the web. Students using laptops also had
difficulty with the interpretation stage of listening, as they found less clarity in
the parts of the lecture they heard and did not understand the course material as
much as students who didn’t use a laptop. The difficulties with receiving and
interpreting obviously create issues with recall that can lead to lower academic
performance in the class. Laptop use also negatively affected the listening
abilities of students not using laptops. These students reported that they were
distracted, as their attention was drawn to the laptop screens of other students.
1. What are some common ways that you engage in media multitasking?
What are some positive and negative consequences of your media
multitasking?
2. What strategies do you or could you use to help minimize the negative
effects of media multitasking?
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3. Should laptops, smartphones, and other media devices be used by
students during college classes? Why or why not? What restrictions or
guidelines for use could instructors provide that would capitalize on the
presence of such media to enhance student learning and help minimize
distractions?
Lack of Listening Preparation
Another barrier to effective listening is a general lack of listening preparation.
Unfortunately, most people have never received any formal training or
instruction related to listening. Although some people think listening skills just
develop over time, competent listening is difficult, and enhancing listening skills
takes concerted effort. Even when listening education is available, people do not
embrace it as readily as they do opportunities to enhance their speaking skills.
After teaching communication courses for several years, I have consistently found
that students and teachers approach the listening part of the course less
enthusiastically than some of the other parts. Listening is often viewed as an
annoyance or a chore, or just ignored or minimized as part of the communication
process. In addition, our individualistic society values speaking more than
listening, as it’s the speakers who are sometimes literally in the spotlight.
Although listening competence is a crucial part of social interaction and many of
us value others we perceive to be “good listeners,” listening just doesn’t get the
same kind of praise, attention, instruction, or credibility as speaking. Teachers,
parents, and relational partners explicitly convey the importance of listening
through statements like “You better listen to me,” “Listen closely,” and “Listen
up,” but these demands are rarely paired with concrete instruction. So unless you
plan on taking more communication courses in the future (and I hope you do),
this chapter may be the only instruction you receive on the basics of the listening
process, some barriers to effective listening, and how we can increase our
listening competence.
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Bad Messages and/or Speakers
Bad messages and/or speakers also present a barrier to effective listening.
Sometimes our trouble listening originates in the sender. In terms of message
construction, poorly structured messages or messages that are too vague, too
jargon filled, or too simple can present listening difficulties. In terms of speakers’
delivery, verbal fillers, monotone voices, distracting movements, or a disheveled
appearance can inhibit our ability to cognitively process a message.Owen
Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 196. As we will learn in Section 5.2.3 "Bad
Listening Practices", speakers can employ particular strategies to create
listenable messages that take some of the burden off the listener by tailoring a
message to be heard and processed easily.Chapter 9 "Preparing a Speech" also
discusses many strategies for creating messages tailored for oral delivery,
including things like preview and review statements, transitions, and parallel
wording. Listening also becomes difficult when a speaker tries to present too
much information. Information overload is a common barrier to effective
listening that good speakers can help mitigate by building redundancy into their
speeches and providing concrete examples of new information to help audience
members interpret and understand the key ideas.
Prejudice
Oscar Wilde said, “Listening is a very dangerous thing. If one listens one may be
convinced.” Unfortunately, some of our default ways of processing information
and perceiving others lead us to rigid ways of thinking. When we engage in
prejudiced listening, we are usually trying to preserve our ways of thinking and
avoid being convinced of something different. This type of prejudice is a barrier
to effective listening, because when we prejudge a person based on his or her
identity or ideas, we usually stop listening in an active and/or ethical way.
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We exhibit prejudice in our listening in several ways, some of which are more
obvious than others. For example, we may claim to be in a hurry and only
selectively address the parts of a message that we agree with or that aren’t
controversial. We can also operate from a state of denial where we avoid a subject
or person altogether so that our views are not challenged. Prejudices that are
based on a person’s identity, such as race, age, occupation, or appearance, may
lead us to assume that we know what he or she will say, essentially closing down
the listening process. Keeping an open mind and engaging in perception checking
can help us identify prejudiced listening and hopefully shift into more competent
listening practices.
Bad Listening Practices
The previously discussed barriers to effective listening may be difficult to
overcome because they are at least partially beyond our control. Physical barriers,
cognitive limitations, and perceptual biases exist within all of us, and it is more
realistic to believe that we can become more conscious of and lessen them than it
is to believe that we can eliminate them altogether. Other “bad listening”
practices may be habitual, but they are easier to address with some concerted
effort. These bad listening practices include interrupting, distorted listening,
eavesdropping, aggressive listening, narcissistic listening, and pseudo-listening.
Interrupting
Conversations unfold as a series of turns, and turn taking is negotiated through a
complex set of verbal and nonverbal signals that are consciously and
subconsciously received. In this sense, conversational turn taking has been
likened to a dance where communicators try to avoid stepping on each other’s
toes. One of the most frequent glitches in the turn-taking process is interruption,
but not all interruptions are considered “bad listening.” An interruption could be
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unintentional if we misread cues and think a person is done speaking only to
have him or her start up again at the same time we do. Sometimes interruptions
are more like overlapping statements that show support (e.g., “I think so too.”) or
excitement about the conversation (e.g., “That’s so cool!”). Back-channel cues like
“uh-huh,” as we learned earlier, also overlap with a speaker’s message. We may
also interrupt out of necessity if we’re engaged in a task with the other person and
need to offer directions (e.g., “Turn left here.”), instructions (e.g., “Will you whisk
the eggs?”), or warnings (e.g., “Look out behind you!”). All these interruptions are
not typically thought of as evidence of bad listening unless they become
distracting for the speaker or are unnecessary.
Unintentional interruptions can still be considered bad listening if they result
from mindless communication. As we’ve already learned, intended meaning is
not as important as the meaning that is generated in the interaction itself. So if
you interrupt unintentionally, but because you were only half-listening, then the
interruption is still evidence of bad listening. The speaker may form a negative
impression of you that can’t just be erased by you noting that you didn’t “mean to
interrupt.” Interruptions can also be used as an attempt to dominate a
conversation. A person engaging in this type of interruption may lead the other
communicator to try to assert dominance, too, resulting in a competition to see
who can hold the floor the longest or the most often. More than likely, though,
the speaker will form a negative impression of the interrupter and may withdraw
from the conversation.
Distorted Listening
Distorted listening occurs in many ways. Sometimes we just get the order of
information wrong, which can have relatively little negative effects if we are
casually recounting a story, annoying effects if we forget the order of turns (left,
right, left or right, left, right?) in our driving directions, or very negative effects if
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we recount the events of a crime out of order, which leads to faulty testimony at a
criminal trial. Rationalization is another form of distorted listening through
which we adapt, edit, or skew incoming information to fit our existing schemata.
We may, for example, reattribute the cause of something to better suit our own
beliefs. If a professor is explaining to a student why he earned a “D” on his final
paper, the student could reattribute the cause from “I didn’t follow the paper
guidelines” to “this professor is an unfair grader.” Sometimes we actually change
the words we hear to make them better fit what we are thinking. This can easily
happen if we join a conversation late, overhear part of a conversation, or are
being a lazy listener and miss important setup and context. Passing along
distorted information can lead to negative consequences ranging from starting a
false rumor about someone to passing along incorrect medical instructions from
one health-care provider to the next.Owen Hargie,Skilled Interpersonal
Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011),
191. Last, the addition of material to a message is a type of distorted listening that
actually goes against our normal pattern of listening, which involves reducing the
amount of information and losing some meaning as we take it in. The metaphor
of “weaving a tall tale” is related to the practice of distorting through addition, as
inaccurate or fabricated information is added to what was actually heard.
Addition of material is also a common feature of gossip. An excellent example of
the result of distorted listening is provided by the character Anthony Crispino
on Saturday Night Live, who passes along distorted news on the “Weekend
Update” segment. In past episodes, he has noted that Lebron James turned down
theCleveland Show to be on Miami Vice (instead of left the Cleveland Cavaliers to
play basketball for the Miami Heat) and that President Obama planned on
repealing the “Bush haircuts” (instead of the Bush tax cuts).
Eavesdropping
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Eavesdropping is a bad listening practice that involves a calculated and planned
attempt to secretly listen to a conversation. There is a difference between
eavesdropping on and overhearing a conversation. Many if not most of the
interactions we have throughout the day occur in the presence of other people.
However, given that our perceptual fields are usually focused on the interaction,
we are often unaware of the other people around us or don’t think about the fact
that they could be listening in on our conversation. We usually only become
aware of the fact that other people could be listening in when we’re discussing
something private.
People eavesdrop for a variety of reasons. People might think another person is
talking about them behind their back or that someone is engaged in illegal or
unethical behavior. Sometimes people eavesdrop to feed the gossip mill or out of
curiosity.Steven McCornack, Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to
Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007), 208. In
any case, this type of listening is considered bad because it is a violation of
people’s privacy. Consequences for eavesdropping may include an angry reaction
if caught, damage to interpersonal relationships, or being perceived as dishonest
and sneaky. Additionally, eavesdropping may lead people to find out information
that is personally upsetting or hurtful, especially if the point of the eavesdropping
is to find out what people are saying behind their back.
Aggressive Listening
Aggressive listening is a bad listening practice in which people pay attention in
order to attack something that a speaker says.Steven McCornack, Reflect and
Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA:
Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007), 209. Aggressive listeners like to ambush speakers in
order to critique their ideas, personality, or other characteristics. Such behavior
often results from built-up frustration within an interpersonal relationship.
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Unfortunately, the more two people know each other, the better they will be at
aggressive listening. Take the following exchange between long-term partners:
Deb: I’ve been thinking about making a salsa garden next to the side porch. I think it would be really good to be able to go pick our own tomatoes and peppers and cilantro to make homemade salsa.
Summer: Really? When are you thinking about doing it?
Deb: Next weekend. Would you like to help?
Summer: I won’t hold my breath. Every time you come up with some “idea of the week” you get so excited about it. But do you ever follow through with it? No. We’ll be eating salsa from the store next year, just like we are now.
Although Summer’s initial response to Deb’s idea is seemingly appropriate and
positive, she asks the question because she has already planned her upcoming
aggressive response. Summer’s aggression toward Deb isn’t about a salsa garden;
it’s about a building frustration with what Summer perceives as Deb’s lack of
follow-through on her ideas. Aside from engaging in aggressive listening because
of built-up frustration, such listeners may also attack others’ ideas or mock their
feelings because of their own low self-esteem and insecurities.
Narcissistic Listening
Narcissistic listening is a form of self-centered and self-absorbed listening in
which listeners try to make the interaction about them.Steven
McCornack, Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal
Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007), 212. Narcissistic
listeners redirect the focus of the conversation to them by interrupting or
changing the topic. When the focus is taken off them, narcissistic listeners may
give negative feedback by pouting, providing negative criticism of the speaker or
topic, or ignoring the speaker. A common sign of narcissistic listening is the
combination of a “pivot,” when listeners shift the focus of attention back to them,
and “one-upping,” when listeners try to top what previous speakers have said
during the interaction. You can see this narcissistic combination in the following
interaction:
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Bryce: My boss has been really unfair to me lately and hasn’t been letting me work around my class schedule. I think I may have to quit, but I don’t know where I’ll find another job.
Toby: Why are you complaining? I’ve been working with the same stupid boss for two years. He doesn’t even care that I’m trying to get my degree and work at the same time. And you should hear the way he talks to me in front of the other employees.
Narcissistic listeners, given their self-centeredness, may actually fool themselves
into thinking that they are listening and actively contributing to a conversation.
We all have the urge to share our own stories during interactions, because other
people’s communication triggers our own memories about related experiences. It
is generally more competent to withhold sharing our stories until the other
person has been able to speak and we have given the appropriate support and
response. But we all shift the focus of a conversation back to us occasionally,
either because we don’t know another way to respond or because we are making
an attempt at empathy. Narcissistic listeners consistently interrupt or follow
another speaker with statements like “That reminds me of the time…,” “Well, if I
were you…,” and “That’s nothing…”Michael P. Nichols, The Lost Art of
Listening (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1995), 68–72.As we’ll learn later,
matching stories isn’t considered empathetic listening, but occasionally doing it
doesn’t make you a narcissistic listener.
Pseudo-listening
Do you have a friend or family member who repeats stories? If so, then you’ve
probably engaged in pseudo-listening as a politeness strategy. Pseudo-listening is
behaving as if you’re paying attention to a speaker when you’re actually
not.Steven McCornack, Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal
Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007), 208. Outwardly
visible signals of attentiveness are an important part of the listening process, but
when they are just an “act,” the pseudo-listener is engaging in bad listening
behaviors. She or he is not actually going through the stages of the listening
process and will likely not be able to recall the speaker’s message or offer a
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competent and relevant response. Although it is a bad listening practice, we all
understandably engage in pseudo-listening from time to time. If a friend needs
someone to talk but you’re really tired or experiencing some other barrier to
effective listening, it may be worth engaging in pseudo-listening as a relational
maintenance strategy, especially if the friend just needs a sounding board and
isn’t expecting advice or guidance. We may also pseudo-listen to a romantic
partner or grandfather’s story for the fifteenth time to prevent hurting their
feelings. We should avoid pseudo-listening when possible and should definitely
avoid making it a listening habit. Although we may get away with it in some
situations, each time we risk being “found out,” which could have negative
relational consequences.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
• Environmental and physical barriers to effective listening include furniture
placement, environmental noise such as sounds of traffic or people talking,
physiological noise such as a sinus headache or hunger, and psychological noise
such as stress or anger.
• Cognitive barriers to effective listening include the difference between speech
and thought rate that allows us “extra room” to think about other things while
someone is talking and limitations in our ability or willingness to concentrate or
pay attention. Personal barriers to effective listening include a lack of listening
preparation, poorly structured and/or poorly delivered messages, and prejudice.
• There are several bad listening practices that we should avoid, as they do
not facilitate effective listening:
o Interruptions that are unintentional or serve an important or useful
purpose are not considered bad listening. When interrupting becomes a
habit or is used in an attempt to dominate a conversation, then it is a
barrier to effective listening.
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o Distorted listening occurs when we incorrectly recall information, skew
information to fit our expectations or existing schemata, or add material
to embellish or change information.
o Eavesdropping is a planned attempt to secretly listen to a conversation,
which is a violation of the speakers’ privacy.
o Aggressive listening is a bad listening practice in which people pay
attention to a speaker in order to attack something they say.
o Narcissistic listening is self-centered and self-absorbed listening in which
listeners try to make the interaction about them by interrupting, changing
the subject, or drawing attention away from others.
o Pseudo-listening is “fake listening,” in that people behave like they are
paying attention and listening when they actually are not.
E X E R C I S E S
1. We are capable of thinking faster than the speed at which the average person
speaks, which allows us some room to put mental faculties toward things other
than listening. What typically makes your mind wander?
2. Bad speakers and messages are a common barrier to effective listening. Describe
a time recently when your ability to listen was impaired by the poor delivery
and/or content of another person.
3. Of the bad listening practices listed, which do you use the most? Why do you
think you use this one more than the others? What can you do to help prevent or
lessen this barrier?
5.3 Improving Listening Competence
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Identify strategies for improving listening competence at each stage of the
listening process.
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2. Summarize the characteristics of active listening.
3. Apply critical-listening skills in interpersonal, educational, and mediated contexts.
4. Practice empathetic listening skills.
5. Discuss ways to improve listening competence in relational, professional, and
cultural contexts.
Many people admit that they could stand to improve their listening skills. This
section will help us do that. In this section, we will learn strategies for developing
and improving competence at each stage of the listening process. We will also
define active listening and the behaviors that go along with it. Looking back to the
types of listening discussed earlier, we will learn specific strategies for sharpening
our critical and empathetic listening skills. In keeping with our focus on
integrative learning, we will also apply the skills we have learned in academic,
professional, and relational contexts and explore how culture and gender affect
listening.
Listening Competence at Each Stage of the Listening Process
We can develop competence within each stage of the listening process, as the
following list indicates:Alice Ridge, “A Perspective of Listening Skills,”
in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley
(Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 5–6.
1. To improve listening at the receiving stage,
o prepare yourself to listen,
o discern between intentional messages and noise,
o concentrate on stimuli most relevant to your listening purpose(s) or
goal(s),
o be mindful of the selection and attention process as much as possible,
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o pay attention to turn-taking signals so you can follow the conversational
flow, and
o avoid interrupting someone while they are speaking in order to maintain
your ability to receive stimuli and listen.
2. To improve listening at the interpreting stage,
o identify main points and supporting points;
o use contextual clues from the person or environment to discern additional
meaning;
o be aware of how a relational, cultural, or situational context can influence
meaning;
o be aware of the different meanings of silence; and
o note differences in tone of voice and other paralinguistic cues that
influence meaning.
3. To improve listening at the recalling stage,
o use multiple sensory channels to decode messages and make more
complete memories;
o repeat, rephrase, and reorganize information to fit your cognitive
preferences; and
o use mnemonic devices as a gimmick to help with recall.
4. To improve listening at the evaluating stage,
o separate facts, inferences, and judgments;
o be familiar with and able to identify persuasive strategies and fallacies of
reasoning;
o assess the credibility of the speaker and the message; and
o be aware of your own biases and how your perceptual filters can create
barriers to effective listening.
5. To improve listening at the responding stage,
o ask appropriate clarifying and follow-up questions and paraphrase
information to check understanding,
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o give feedback that is relevant to the speaker’s purpose/motivation for
speaking,
o adapt your response to the speaker and the context, and
o do not let the preparation and rehearsal of your response diminish earlier
stages of listening.
Active Listening
Active listening refers to the process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening
behaviors with positive cognitive listening practices. Active listening can help
address many of the environmental, physical, cognitive, and personal barriers to
effective listening that we discussed earlier. The behaviors associated with active
listening can also enhance informational, critical, and empathetic listening.
Active Listening Can Help Overcome Barriers to Effective Listening
Being an active listener starts before you actually start receiving a message.
Active listeners make strategic choices and take action in order to set up ideal
listening conditions. Physical and environmental noises can often be managed by
moving locations or by manipulating the lighting, temperature, or furniture.
When possible, avoid important listening activities during times of distracting
psychological or physiological noise. For example, we often know when we’re
going to be hungry, full, more awake, less awake, more anxious, or less anxious,
and advance planning can alleviate the presence of these barriers. For college
students, who often have some flexibility in their class schedules, knowing when
you best listen can help you make strategic choices regarding what class to take
when. And student options are increasing, as some colleges are offering classes in
the overnight hours to accommodate working students and students who are just
“night owls.”Greg Toppo, “Colleges Start Offering ‘Midnight Classes’ for Offbeat
Needs,” USA Today, October 27, 2011, accessed July 13,
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2012,http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011–10–26/college-
midnight-classes/50937996/1.Of course, we don’t always have control over our
schedule, in which case we will need to utilize other effective listening strategies
that we will learn more about later in this chapter.
In terms of cognitive barriers to effective listening, we can prime ourselves to
listen by analyzing a listening situation before it begins. For example, you could
ask yourself the following questions:
1. “What are my goals for listening to this message?”
2. “How does this message relate to me / affect my life?”
3. “What listening type and style are most appropriate for this message?”
As we learned earlier, the difference between speech and thought processing rate
means listeners’ level of attention varies while receiving a message. Effective
listeners must work to maintain focus as much as possible and refocus when
attention shifts or fades.Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley, “A
Listening Taxonomy,” in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and
Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993),
19. One way to do this is to find the motivation to listen. If you can identify
intrinsic and or extrinsic motivations for listening to a particular message, then
you will be more likely to remember the information presented. Ask yourself how
a message could impact your life, your career, your intellect, or your
relationships. This can help overcome our tendency toward selective attention. As
senders of messages, we can help listeners by making the relevance of what we’re
saying clear and offering well-organized messages that are tailored for our
listeners. We will learn much more about establishing relevance, organizing a
message, and gaining the attention of an audience in public speaking contexts
later in the book.
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Given that we can process more words per minute than people can speak, we can
engage in internal dialogue, making good use of our intrapersonal
communication, to become a better listener. Three possibilities for internal
dialogue include covert coaching, self-reinforcement, and covert questioning;
explanations and examples of each follow:Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal
Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 193.
• Covert coaching involves sending yourself messages containing advice
about better listening, such as “You’re getting distracted by things you
have to do after work. Just focus on what your supervisor is saying now.”
• Self-reinforcement involves sending yourself affirmative and positive
messages: “You’re being a good active listener. This will help you do well
on the next exam.”
• Covert questioning involves asking yourself questions about the
content in ways that focus your attention and reinforce the material:
“What is the main idea from that PowerPoint slide?” “Why is he talking
about his brother in front of our neighbors?”
Internal dialogue is a more structured way to engage in active listening, but we
can use more general approaches as well. I suggest that students occupy the
“extra” channels in their mind with thoughts that are related to the primary
message being received instead of thoughts that are unrelated. We can use those
channels to resort, rephrase, and repeat what a speaker says. When we resort, we
can help mentally repair disorganized messages. When we rephrase, we can put
messages into our own words in ways that better fit our cognitive preferences.
When we repeat, we can help messages transfer from short-term to long-term
memory.
Other tools can help with concentration and memory. Mental bracketing refers to
the process of intentionally separating out intrusive or irrelevant thoughts that
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may distract you from listening.Steven McCornack, Reflect and Relate: An
Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St
Martin’s, 2007), 192. This requires that we monitor our concentration and
attention and be prepared to let thoughts that aren’t related to a speaker’s
message pass through our minds without us giving them much
attention. Mnemonic devices are techniques that can aid in information
recall.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 190. Starting in ancient Greece and Rome,
educators used these devices to help people remember information. They work by
imposing order and organization on information. Three main mnemonic devices
are acronyms, rhymes, and visualization, and examples of each follow:
• Acronyms. HOMES—to help remember the Great Lakes (Huron,
Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior).
• Rhyme. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey”—to remember which way most light
bulbs, screws, and other coupling devices turn to make them go in or out.
• Visualization. Imagine seeing a glass of port wine (which is red) and the
red navigation light on a boat to help remember that the red light on a boat
is always on the port side, which will also help you remember that the blue
light must be on the starboard side.
Active Listening Behaviors
From the suggestions discussed previously, you can see that we can prepare for
active listening in advance and engage in certain cognitive strategies to help us
listen better. We also engage in active listening behaviors as we receive and
process messages.
Eye contact is a key sign of active listening. Speakers usually interpret a listener’s
eye contact as a signal of attentiveness. While a lack of eye contact may indicate
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inattentiveness, it can also signal cognitive processing. When we look away to
process new information, we usually do it unconsciously. Be aware, however, that
your conversational partner may interpret this as not listening. If you really do
need to take a moment to think about something, you could indicate that to the
other person by saying, “That’s new information to me. Give me just a second to
think through it.” We already learned the role that back-channel cues play in
listening. An occasional head nod and “uh-huh” signal that you are paying
attention. However, when we give these cues as a form of “autopilot” listening,
others can usually tell that we are pseudo-listening, and whether they call us on it
or not, that impression could lead to negative judgments.
A more direct way to indicate active listening is to reference previous statements
made by the speaker. Norms of politeness usually call on us to reference a past
statement or connect to the speaker’s current thought before starting a
conversational turn. Being able to summarize what someone said to ensure that
the topic has been satisfactorily covered and understood or being able to segue in
such a way that validates what the previous speaker said helps regulate
conversational flow. Asking probing questions is another way to directly indicate
listening and to keep a conversation going, since they encourage and invite a
person to speak more. You can also ask questions that seek clarification and not
just elaboration. Speakers should present complex information at a slower
speaking rate than familiar information, but many will not. Remember that your
nonverbal feedback can be useful for a speaker, as it signals that you are listening
but also whether or not you understand. If a speaker fails to read your nonverbal
feedback, you may need to follow up with verbal communication in the form of
paraphrased messages and clarifying questions.
As active listeners, we want to be excited and engaged, but don’t let excitement
manifest itself in interruptions. Being an active listener means knowing when to
maintain our role as listener and resist the urge to take a conversational turn.
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Research shows that people with higher social status are more likely to interrupt
others, so keep this in mind and be prepared for it if you are speaking to a high-
status person, or try to resist it if you are the high-status person in an
interaction.Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory,
and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 197.
Note-taking can also indicate active listening. Translating information through
writing into our own cognitive structures and schemata allows us to better
interpret and assimilate information. Of course, note-taking isn’t always a viable
option. It would be fairly awkward to take notes during a first date or a casual
exchange between new coworkers. But in some situations where we wouldn’t
normally consider taking notes, a little awkwardness might be worth it for the
sake of understanding and recalling the information. For example, many people
don’t think about taking notes when getting information from their doctor or
banker. I actually invite students to take notes during informal meetings because
I think they sometimes don’t think about it or don’t think it’s appropriate. But
many people would rather someone jot down notes instead of having to respond
to follow-up questions on information that was already clearly conveyed. To help
facilitate your note-taking, you might say something like “Do you mind if I jot
down some notes? This seems important.”
In summary, active listening is exhibited through verbal and nonverbal cues,
including steady eye contact with the speaker; smiling; slightly raised eyebrows;
upright posture; body position that is leaned in toward the speaker; nonverbal
back-channel cues such as head nods; verbal back-channel cues such as “OK,”
“mmhum,” or “oh”; and a lack of distracting mannerisms like doodling or
fidgeting.Owen Hargie,Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 207.
“Getting Competent”
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Listening in the Classroom
The following statistic illustrates the importance of listening in academic
contexts: four hundred first-year students were given a listening test before they
started classes. At the end of that year, 49 percent of the students with low scores
were on academic probation, while only 4 percent of those who scored high
were.Martha S. Conaway, “Listening: Learning Tool and Retention Agent,”
inImproving Reading and Study Skills, eds. Anne S. Algier and Keith W. Algier
(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1982). Listening effectively isn’t something that
just happens; it takes work on the part of students and teachers. One of the most
difficult challenges for teachers is eliciting good listening behaviors from their
students, and the method of instruction teachers use affects how a student will
listen and learn.Melissa L. Beall et al., “State of the Context: Listening in
Education,” The International Journal of Listening 22 (2008): 124. Given that
there are different learning styles, we know that to be effective, teachers may have
to find some way to appeal to each learning style. Although teachers often make
this attempt, it is also not realistic or practical to think that this practice can be
used all the time. Therefore, students should also think of ways they can improve
their listening competence, because listening is an active process that we can
exert some control over. The following tips will help you listen more effectively in
the classroom:
• Be prepared to process challenging messages. You can use the internal
dialogue strategy we discussed earlier to “mentally repair” messages that
you receive to make them more listenable.Donald L. Rubin, “Listenability
= Oral-Based Discourse + Considerateness,” inPerspectives on Listening,
eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex
Publishing Corporation, 1993), 277. For example, you might say, “It seems
like we’ve moved on to a different main point now. See if you can pull out
the subpoints to help stay on track.”
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• Act like a good listener. While I’m not advocating that you engage in
pseudo-listening, engaging in active listening behaviors can help you listen
better when you are having difficulty concentrating or finding motivation
to listen. Make eye contact with the instructor and give appropriate
nonverbal feedback. Students often take notes only when directed to by
the instructor or when there is an explicit reason to do so (e.g., to recall
information for an exam or some other purpose). Since you never know
what information you may want to recall later, take notes even when it’s
not required that you do so. As a caveat, however, do not try to transcribe
everything your instructor says or includes on a PowerPoint, because you
will likely miss information related to main ideas that is more important
than minor details. Instead, listen for main ideas.
• Figure out from where the instructor most frequently speaks and sit close
to that area. Being able to make eye contact with an instructor facilitates
listening, increases rapport, allows students to benefit more from
immediacy behaviors, and minimizes distractions since the instructor is
the primary stimulus within the student’s field of vision.
• Figure out your preferred learning style and adopt listening strategies that
complement it.
• Let your instructor know when you don’t understand something. Instead
of giving a quizzical look that says “What?” or pretending you know what’s
going on, let your instructor know when you don’t understand something.
Instead of asking the instructor to simply repeat something, ask her or him
to rephrase it or provide an example. When you ask questions, ask specific
clarifying questions that request a definition, an explanation, or an
elaboration.
1. What are some listening challenges that you face in the classroom? What
can you do to overcome them?
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2. Take the Learning Styles Inventory survey at the following link to
determine what your primary learning style
is: http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/LSI/LSI.htm. Do some research to
identify specific listening/studying strategies that work well for your
learning style.
Becoming a Better Critical Listener
Critical listening involves evaluating the credibility, completeness, and worth of a
speaker’s message. Some listening scholars note that critical listening represents
the deepest level of listening.James J. Floyd, Listening, a Practical
Approach (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1985), 39–40. Critical listening is also
important in a democracy that values free speech. The US Constitution grants US
citizens the right to free speech, and many people duly protect that right for you
and me. Since people can say just about anything they want, we are surrounded
by countless messages that vary tremendously in terms of their value, degree of
ethics, accuracy, and quality. Therefore it falls on us to responsibly and critically
evaluate the messages we receive. Some messages are produced by people who
are intentionally misleading, ill informed, or motivated by the potential for
personal gain, but such messages can be received as honest, credible, or altruistic
even though they aren’t. Being able to critically evaluate messages helps us have
more control over and awareness of the influence such people may have on us. In
order to critically evaluate messages, we must enhance our critical-listening
skills.
Some critical-listening skills include distinguishing between facts and inferences,
evaluating supporting evidence, discovering your own biases, and listening
beyond the message. Chapter 3 "Verbal Communication" noted that part of being
an ethical communicator is being accountable for what we say by distinguishing
between facts and inferences.S. I. Hayakawa and Alan R. Hayakawa, Language in
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Thought and Action, 5th ed. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1990), 22–32. This
is an ideal that is not always met in practice, so a critical listener should also
make these distinctions, since the speaker may not. Since facts are widely agreed-
on conclusions, they can be verified as such through some extra research. Take
care in your research to note the context from which the fact emerged, as
speakers may take a statistic or quote out of context, distorting its meaning.
Inferences are not as easy to evaluate, because they are based on unverifiable
thoughts of a speaker or on speculation. Inferences are usually based at least
partially on something that is known, so it is possible to evaluate whether an
inference was made carefully or not. In this sense, you may evaluate an inference
based on several known facts as more credible than an inference based on one
fact and more speculation. Asking a question like “What led you to think this?” is
a good way to get information needed to evaluate the strength of an inference.
Distinguishing among facts and inferences and evaluating the credibility of
supporting material are critical-listening skills that also require good
informational-listening skills. In more formal speaking situations, speakers may
cite published or publicly available sources to support their messages. When
speakers verbally cite their sources, you can use the credibility of the source to
help evaluate the credibility of the speaker’s message. For example, a national
newspaper would likely be more credible on a major national event than a tabloid
magazine or an anonymous blog. In regular interactions, people also have
sources for their information but are not as likely to note them within their
message. Asking questions like “Where’d you hear that?” or “How do you know
that?” can help get information needed to make critical evaluations. You can look
to Chapter 11 "Informative and Persuasive Speaking" to learn much more about
persuasive strategies and how to evaluate the strength of arguments.
Discovering your own biases can help you recognize when they interfere with
your ability to fully process a message. Unfortunately, most people aren’t asked to
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critically reflect on their identities and their perspectives unless they are in
college, and even people who were once critically reflective in college or
elsewhere may no longer be so. Biases are also difficult to discover, because we
don’t see them as biases; we see them as normal or “the way things are.” Asking
yourself “What led you to think this?” and “How do you know that?” can be a
good start toward acknowledging your biases. We will also learn more about self-
reflection and critical thinking in Chapter 8 "Culture and Communication".
Last, to be a better critical listener, think beyond the message. A good critical
listener asks the following questions: What is being said and what is not being
said? In whose interests are these claims being made? Whose voices/ideas are
included and excluded? These questions take into account that speakers
intentionally and unintentionally slant, edit, or twist messages to make them fit
particular perspectives or for personal gain. Also ask yourself questions like
“What are the speaker’s goals?” You can also rephrase that question and direct it
toward the speaker, asking them, “What is your goal in this interaction?” When
you feel yourself nearing an evaluation or conclusion, pause and ask yourself
what influenced you. Although we like to think that we are most often persuaded
through logical evidence and reasoning, we are susceptible to persuasive
shortcuts that rely on the credibility or likability of a speaker or on our emotions
rather than the strength of his or her evidence.Richard E. Petty and John T.
Cacioppo, “The Effects of Involvement on Responses to Argument Quantity and
Quality: Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion,” Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 46, no. 1 (1984): 69–81. So keep a check on your
emotional involvement to be aware of how it may be influencing your evaluation.
Also, be aware that how likable, attractive, or friendly you think a person is may
also lead you to more positively evaluate his or her messages.
Other Tips to Help You Become a Better Critical Listener
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• Ask questions to help get more information and increase your critical
awareness when you get answers like “Because that’s the way things are,”
“It’s always been like that,” “I don’t know; I just don’t like it,” “Everyone
believes that,” or “It’s just natural/normal.” These are not really answers
that are useful in your critical evaluation and may be an indication that
speakers don’t really know why they reached the conclusion they did or
that they reached it without much critical thinking on their part.
• Be especially critical of speakers who set up “either/or” options, because
they artificially limit an issue or situation to two options when there are
always more. Also be aware of people who overgeneralize, especially when
those generalizations are based on stereotypical or prejudiced views. For
example, the world is not just Republican or Democrat, male or female,
pro-life or pro-choice, or Christian or atheist.
• Evaluate the speaker’s message instead of his or her appearance,
personality, or other characteristics. Unless someone’s appearance,
personality, or behavior is relevant to an interaction, direct your criticism
to the message.
• Be aware that critical evaluation isn’t always quick or easy. Sometimes you
may have to withhold judgment because your evaluation will take more
time. Also keep in mind your evaluation may not be final, and you should
be open to critical reflection and possible revision later.
• Avoid mind reading, which is assuming you know what the other person is
going to say or that you know why they reached the conclusion they did.
This leads to jumping to conclusions, which shortcuts the critical
evaluation process.
“Getting Critical”
Critical Listening and Political Spin
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In just the past twenty years, the rise of political fact checking occurred as a result
of the increasingly sophisticated rhetoric of politicians and their
representatives.Michael Dobbs, “The Rise of Political Fact-Checking,” New
America Foundation (2012): 1. As political campaigns began to adopt
communication strategies employed by advertising agencies and public relations
firms, their messages became more ambiguous, unclear, and sometimes outright
misleading. While there are numerous political fact-checking sources now to
which citizens can turn for an analysis of political messages, it is important that
we are able to use our own critical-listening skills to see through some of the
political spin that now characterizes politics in the United States.
Since we get most of our political messages through the media rather than
directly from a politician, the media is a logical place to turn for guidance on fact
checking. Unfortunately, the media is often manipulated by political
communication strategies as well.Michael Dobbs, “The Rise of Political Fact-
Checking,” New America Foundation (2012): 1. Sometimes media outlets
transmit messages even though a critical evaluation of the message shows that it
lacks credibility, completeness, or worth. Journalists who engage in political fact
checking have been criticized for putting their subjective viewpoints into what is
supposed to be objective news coverage. These journalists have fought back
against what they call the norm of “false equivalence.” One view of journalism
sees the reporter as an objective conveyer of political messages. This could be
described as the “We report; you decide” brand of journalism. Other reporters see
themselves as “truth seekers.” In this sense, the journalists engage in some
critical listening and evaluation on the part of the citizen, who may not have the
time or ability to do so.
Michael Dobbs, who started the political fact-checking program at
the Washington Post, says, “Fairness is preserved not by treating all sides of an
argument equally, but through an independent, open-minded approach to the
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evidence.”Michael Dobbs, “The Rise of Political Fact-Checking,” New America
Foundation (2012): 3. He also notes that outright lies are much less common in
politics than are exaggeration, spin, and insinuation. This fact puts much of
political discourse into an ethical gray area that can be especially difficult for even
professional fact checkers to evaluate. Instead of simple “true/false” categories,
fact checkers like the Washington Post issue evaluations such as “Half true,
mostly true, half-flip, or full-flop” to political statements. Although we all don’t
have the time and resources to fact check all the political statements we hear, it
may be worth employing some of the strategies used by these professional fact
checkers on issues that are very important to us or have major implications for
others. Some fact-checking resources
includehttp://www.PolitiFact.com, http://www.factcheck.org,
andhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker. The caution here for
any critical listener is to be aware of our tendency to gravitate toward messages
with which we agree and avoid or automatically reject messages with which we
disagree. In short, it’s often easier for us to critically evaluate the messages of
politicians with whom we disagree and uncritically accept messages from those
with whom we agree. Exploring the fact-check websites above can help expose
ourselves to critical evaluation that we might not otherwise encounter.
1. One school of thought in journalism says it’s up to the reporters to convey
information as it is presented and then up to the viewer/reader to evaluate
the message. The other school of thought says that the reporter should
investigate and evaluate claims made by those on all sides of an issue
equally and share their findings with viewers/readers. Which approach do
you think is better and why?
2. In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, journalists and news outlets did not
critically evaluate claims from the Bush administration that there was
clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many now cite this
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as an instance of failed fact checking that had global repercussions. Visit
one of the fact-checking resources mentioned previously to find other
examples of fact checking that exposed manipulated messages. To enhance
your critical thinking, find one example that critiques a viewpoint,
politician, or political party that you typically agree with and one that you
disagree with. Discuss what you learned from the examples you found.
Becoming a Better Empathetic Listener
A prominent scholar of empathetic listening describes it this way: “Empathetic
listening is to be respectful of the dignity of others. Empathetic listening is a
caring, a love of the wisdom to be found in others whoever they may be.”Tom
Bruneau, “Empathy and Listening,” in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D.
Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation,
1993), 194. This quote conveys that empathetic listening is more philosophical
than the other types of listening. It requires that we are open to subjectivity and
that we engage in it because we genuinely see it as worthwhile.
Combining active and empathetic listening leads to active-empathetic listening.
During active-empathetic listening 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.Graham D. Bodie, “The Active-Empathetic
Listening Scale (AELS): Conceptualization and Evidence of Validity within the
Interpersonal Domain,” Communication Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2011): 278. To be a
better empathetic listener, we need to suspend or at least attempt to suppress our
judgment of the other person or their message so we can fully attend to both.
Paraphrasing is an important part of empathetic listening, because it helps us put
the other person’s words into our frame of experience without making it about us.
In addition, speaking the words of someone else in our own way can help evoke
within us the feelings that the other person felt while saying them.Graham D.
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Bodie, “The Active-Empathetic Listening Scale (AELS): Conceptualization and
Evidence of Validity within the Interpersonal Domain,” Communication
Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2011): 278. Active-empathetic listening is more than echoing
back verbal messages. We can also engage in mirroring, which refers to a
listener’s replication of the nonverbal signals of a speaker.Tom Bruneau,
“Empathy and Listening,” in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin
and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993),
188. Therapists, for example, are often taught to adopt a posture and tone similar
to their patients in order to build rapport and project empathy.
Paraphrasing and questioning are useful techniques for empathetic listening
because they allow us to respond to a speaker without taking “the floor,” or the
attention, away for long. Specifically, questions that ask for elaboration act as
“verbal door openers,” and inviting someone to speak more and then validating
their speech through active listening cues can help a person feel “listened
to.”Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and
Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 205. I’ve found that paraphrasing and
asking questions are also useful when we feel tempted to share our own stories
and experiences rather than maintaining our listening role. These questions
aren’t intended to solicit more information, so we can guide or direct the speaker
toward a specific course of action. Although it is easier for us to slip into an
advisory mode—saying things like “Well if I were you, I would…”—we have to
resist the temptation to give unsolicited advice.
Empathetic listening can be worthwhile, but it also brings challenges. In terms of
costs, empathetic listening can use up time and effort. Since this type of listening
can’t be contained within a proscribed time frame, it may be especially difficult
for time-oriented listeners.Tom Bruneau, “Empathy and Listening,”
in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley
(Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 195. Empathetic listening can
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also be a test of our endurance, as its orientation toward and focus on supporting
the other requires the processing and integration of much verbal and nonverbal
information. Because of this potential strain, it’s important to know your limits as
an empathetic listener. While listening can be therapeutic, it is not appropriate
for people without training and preparation to try to serve as a therapist. Some
people have chronic issues that necessitate professional listening for the purposes
of evaluation, diagnosis, and therapy. Lending an ear is different from diagnosing
and treating. If you have a friend who is exhibiting signs of a more serious issue
that needs attention, listen to the extent that you feel comfortable and then be
prepared to provide referrals to other resources that have training to help. To face
these challenges, good empathetic listeners typically have a generally positive
self-concept and self-esteem, are nonverbally sensitive and expressive, and are
comfortable with embracing another person’s subjectivity and refraining from too
much analytic thought.
Becoming a Better Contextual Listener
Active, critical, and empathetic listening skills can be helpful in a variety of
contexts. Understanding the role that listening plays in professional, relational,
cultural, and gendered contexts can help us more competently apply these skills.
Whether we are listening to or evaluating messages from a supervisor, parent, or
intercultural conversational partner, we have much to gain or lose based on our
ability to apply listening skills and knowledge in various contexts.
Listening in Professional Contexts
Listening and organizational-communication scholars note that listening is one
of the most neglected aspects of organizational-communication research.Jan
Flynn, Tuula-Riitta Valikoski, and Jennie Grau, “Listening in the Business
Context: Reviewing the State of Research,” The International Journal of
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Listening 22 (2008): 143. Aside from a lack of research, a study also found that
business schools lack curriculum that includes instruction and/or training in
communication skills like listening in their master of business administration
(MBA) programs.Ron Alsop, Wall Street Journal-Eastern Edition240, no. 49
(2002): R4. This lack of a focus on listening persists, even though we know that
more effective listening skills have been shown to enhance sales performance and
that managers who exhibit good listening skills help create open communication
climates that can lead to increased feelings of supportiveness, motivation, and
productivity.Jan Flynn, Tuula-Riitta Valikoski, and Jennie Grau, “Listening in the
Business Context: Reviewing the State of Research,” The International Journal
of Listening 22 (2008): 144–46. Specifically, empathetic listening and active
listening can play key roles in organizational communication. Managers are wise
to enhance their empathetic listening skills, as being able to empathize with
employees contributes to a positive communication climate. Active listening
among organizational members also promotes involvement and increases
motivation, which leads to more cohesion and enhances the communication
climate.
Organizational scholars have examined various communication climates specific
to listening. Listening environment refers to characteristics and norms of an
organization and its members that contribute to expectations for and perceptions
about listening.Judi Brownell, “Listening Environment: A Perspective,”
in Perspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley
(Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 243. Positive listening
environments are perceived to be more employee centered, which can improve
job satisfaction and cohesion. But how do we create such environments?
Positive listening environments are facilitated by the breaking down of barriers to
concentration, the reduction of noise, the creation of a shared reality (through
shared language, such as similar jargon or a shared vision statement), intentional
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spaces that promote listening, official opportunities that promote listening,
training in listening for all employees, and leaders who model good listening
practices and praise others who are successful listeners.Judi Brownell, “Listening
Environment: A Perspective,” inPerspectives on Listening, eds. Andrew D.
Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ: Alex Publishing Corporation,
1993), 245–54. Policies and practices that support listening must go hand in
hand. After all, what does an “open-door” policy mean if it is not coupled with
actions that demonstrate the sincerity of the policy?
“Getting Real”
Becoming a “Listening Leader”
Dr. Rick Bommelje has popularized the concept of the “listening leader.”Listen-
Coach.com, Dr. Rick Listen-Coach, accessed July 13, 2012, http://www.listen-
coach.com. As a listening coach, he offers training and resources to help people in
various career paths increase their listening competence. For people who are very
committed to increasing their listening skills, the International Listening
Association has now endorsed a program to become a Certified Listening
Professional (CLP), which entails advanced independent study, close work with a
listening mentor, and the completion of a written exam.“CLP Training
Program,” International Listening Assocation, accessed July 13,
2012,http://www.listen.org/CLPFAQs. There are also training programs to help
with empathetic listening that are offered through the Compassionate Listening
Project.“Training,” The Compassionate Listening Project, accessed July 13,
2012,http://www.compassionatelistening.org/trainings. These programs
evidence the growing focus on the importance of listening in all professional
contexts.
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Scholarly research has consistently shown that listening ability is a key part of
leadership in professional contexts and competence in listening aids in decision
making. A survey sent to hundreds of companies in the United States found that
poor listening skills create problems at all levels of an organizational hierarchy,
ranging from entry-level positions to CEOs.Owen Hargie,Skilled Interpersonal
Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011),
178.Leaders such as managers, team coaches, department heads, and executives
must be versatile in terms of listening type and style in order to adapt to the
diverse listening needs of employees, clients/customers, colleagues, and other
stakeholders.
Even if we don’t have the time or money to invest in one of these professional-
listening training programs, we can draw inspiration from the goal of becoming a
listening leader. By reading this book, you are already taking an important step
toward improving a variety of communication competencies, including listening,
and you can always take it upon yourself to further your study and increase your
skills in a particular area to better prepare yourself to create positive
communication climates and listening environments. You can also use these
skills to make yourself a more desirable employee.
1. Make a list of the behaviors that you think a listening leader would exhibit.
Which of these do you think you do well? Which do you need to work on?
2. What do you think has contributed to the perceived shortage of listening
skills in professional contexts?
3. Given your personal career goals, what listening skills do you think you
will need to possess and employ in order to be successful?
Listening in Relational Contexts
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Listening plays a central role in establishing and maintaining our
relationships.Richard Nelson-Jones,Human Relationship Skills, 4th ed. (East
Sussex: Routledge, 2006), 37–38. Without some listening competence, we
wouldn’t be able to engage in the self-disclosure process, which is essential for
the establishment of relationships. Newly acquainted people get to know each
other through increasingly personal and reciprocal disclosures of personal
information. In order to reciprocate a conversational partner’s disclosure, we
must process it through listening. Once relationships are formed, listening to
others provides a psychological reward, through the simple act of recognition,
that helps maintain our relationships. Listening to our relational partners and
being listened to in return is part of the give-and-take of any interpersonal
relationship. Our thoughts and experiences “back up” inside of us, and getting
them out helps us maintain a positive balance.Richard Nelson-Jones, Human
Relationship Skills, 4th ed. (East Sussex: Routledge, 2006), 34–35. So something
as routine and seemingly pointless as listening to our romantic partner debrief
the events of his or her day or our roommate recount his or her weekend back
home shows that we are taking an interest in their lives and are willing to put our
own needs and concerns aside for a moment to attend to their needs. Listening
also closely ties to conflict, as a lack of listening often plays a large role in creating
conflict, while effective listening helps us resolve it.
Listening has relational implications throughout our lives, too. Parents who
engage in competent listening behaviors with their children from a very young
age make their children feel worthwhile and appreciated, which affects their
development in terms of personality and character.Michael P. Nichols,The Lost
Art of Listening (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1995), 25.
A lack of listening leads to feelings of loneliness, which results in lower self-
esteem and higher degrees of anxiety. In fact, by the age of four or five years old,
the empathy and recognition shown by the presence or lack of listening has
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molded children’s personalities in noticeable ways.Michael P. Nichols,The Lost
Art of Listening (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1995), 32.Children who have
been listened to grow up expecting that others will be available and receptive to
them. These children are therefore more likely to interact confidently with
teachers, parents, and peers in ways that help develop communication
competence that will be built on throughout their lives. Children who have not
been listened to may come to expect that others will not want to listen to them,
which leads to a lack of opportunities to practice, develop, and hone foundational
communication skills. Fortunately for the more-listened-to children and
unfortunately for the less-listened-to children, these early experiences become
predispositions that don’t change much as the children get older and may
actually reinforce themselves and become stronger.
Listening and Culture
Some cultures place more importance on listening than other cultures. In
general, collectivistic cultures tend to value listening more than individualistic
cultures that are more speaker oriented. The value placed on verbal and
nonverbal meaning also varies by culture and influences how we communicate
and listen. A low-context communication style is one in which much of the
meaning generated within an interaction comes from the verbal communication
used rather than nonverbal or contextual cues. Conversely, much of the meaning
generated by a high-context communication style comes from nonverbal and
contextual cues.Myron W. Lustig and Jolene Koester, Intercultural Competence:
Interpersonal Communication across Cultures, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: Pearson
Education, 2006), 110–14. For example, US Americans of European descent
generally use a low-context communication style, while people in East Asian and
Latin American cultures use a high-context communication style.
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Contextual communication styles affect listening in many ways. Cultures with a
high-context orientation generally use less verbal communication and value
silence as a form of communication, which requires listeners to pay close
attention to nonverbal signals and consider contextual influences on a message.
Cultures with a low-context orientation must use more verbal communication
and provide explicit details, since listeners aren’t expected to derive meaning
from the context. Note that people from low-context cultures may feel frustrated
by the ambiguity of speakers from high-context cultures, while speakers from
high-context cultures may feel overwhelmed or even insulted by the level of detail
used by low-context communicators. Cultures with a low-context communication
style also tend to have a monochronic orientation toward time, while high-
context cultures have a polychronic time orientation, which also affects listening.
As Chapter 8 "Culture and Communication" discusses, cultures that favor a
structured and commodified orientation toward time are said to be monochronic,
while cultures that favor a more flexible orientation are polychronic.
Monochronic cultures like the United States value time and action-oriented
listening styles, especially in professional contexts, because time is seen as a
commodity that is scarce and must be managed.Steven McCornack, Reflect and
Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA:
Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007), 205. This is evidenced by leaders in businesses and
organizations who often request “executive summaries” that only focus on the
most relevant information and who use statements like “Get to the point.”
Polychronic cultures value people and content-oriented listening styles, which
makes sense when we consider that polychronic cultures also tend to be more
collectivistic and use a high-context communication style. In collectivistic
cultures, indirect communication is preferred in cases where direct
communication would be considered a threat to the other person’s face (desired
public image). For example, flatly turning down a business offer would be too
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direct, so a person might reply with a “maybe” instead of a “no.” The person
making the proposal, however, would be able to draw on contextual clues that
they implicitly learned through socialization to interpret the “maybe” as a “no.”
Listening and Gender
Research on gender and listening has produced mixed results. As we’ve already
learned, much of the research on gender differences and communication has
been influenced by gender stereotypes and falsely connected to biological
differences. More recent research has found that people communicate in ways
that conform to gender stereotypes in some situations and not in others, which
shows that our communication is more influenced by societal expectations than
by innate or gendered “hard-wiring.” For example, through socialization, men are
generally discouraged from expressing emotions in public. A woman sharing an
emotional experience with a man may perceive the man’s lack of emotional
reaction as a sign of inattentiveness, especially if he typically shows more
emotion during private interactions. The man, however, may be listening but
withholding nonverbal expressiveness because of social norms. He may not
realize that withholding those expressions could be seen as a lack of empathetic
or active listening. Researchers also dispelled the belief that men interrupt more
than women do, finding that men and women interrupt each other with similar
frequency in cross-gender encounters.Kathryn Dindia, “The Effect of Sex of
Subject and Sex of Partner on Interruptions,” Human Communication
Research 13, no. 3 (1987): 345–71. So men may interrupt each other more in
same-gender interactions as a conscious or subconscious attempt to establish
dominance because such behaviors are expected, as men are generally socialized
to be more competitive than women. However, this type of competitive
interrupting isn’t as present in cross-gender interactions because the contexts
have shifted.
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K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
• You can improve listening competence at the receiving stage by preparing
yourself to listen and distinguishing between intentional messages and noise; at
the interpreting stage by identifying main points and supporting points and
taking multiple contexts into consideration; at the recalling stage by creating
memories using multiple senses and repeating, rephrasing, and reorganizing
messages to fit cognitive preferences; at the evaluating stage by separating facts
from inferences and assessing the credibility of the speaker’s message; and at the
responding stage by asking appropriate questions, offering paraphrased
messages, and adapting your response to the speaker and the situation.
• Active listening is the process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening
behaviors with positive cognitive listening practices and is characterized by
mentally preparing yourself to listen, working to maintain focus on
concentration, using appropriate verbal and nonverbal back-channel cues to
signal attentiveness, and engaging in strategies like note taking and mentally
reorganizing information to help with recall.
• In order to apply critical-listening skills in multiple contexts, we must be able to
distinguish between facts and inferences, evaluate a speaker’s supporting
evidence, discover our own biases, and think beyond the message.
• In order to practice empathetic listening skills, we must be able to support
others’ subjective experience; temporarily set aside our own needs to focus on
the other person; encourage elaboration through active listening and
questioning; avoid the temptation to tell our own stories and/or give advice;
effectively mirror the nonverbal communication of others; and acknowledge our
limits as empathetic listeners.
• Getting integrated: Different listening strategies may need to be applied in
different listening contexts.
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o In professional contexts, listening is considered a necessary skill, but most
people do not receive explicit instruction in listening. Members of an
organization should consciously create a listening environment that
promotes and rewards competent listening behaviors.
o In relational contexts, listening plays a central role in initiating
relationships, as listening is required for mutual self-disclosure, and in
maintaining relationships, as listening to our relational partners provides a
psychological reward in the form of recognition. When people aren’t or
don’t feel listened to, they may experience feelings of isolation or
loneliness that can have negative effects throughout their lives.
o In cultural contexts, high- or low-context communication styles,
monochronic or polychronic orientations toward time, and individualistic
or collectivistic cultural values affect listening preferences and behaviors.
o Research regarding listening preferences and behaviors of men and
women has been contradictory. While some differences in listening exist,
many of them are based more on societal expectations for how men and
women should listen rather than biological differences.
E X E R C I S E S
1. Keep a “listening log” for part of your day. Note times when you feel like you
exhibited competent listening behaviors and note times when listening became
challenging. Analyze the log based on what you have learned in this section.
Which positive listening skills helped you listen? What strategies could you apply
to your listening challenges to improve your listening competence?
2. Apply the strategies for effective critical listening to a political message (a search
for “political speech” or “partisan speech” on YouTube should provide you with
many options). As you analyze the speech, make sure to distinguish between
facts and inferences, evaluate a speaker’s supporting evidence, discuss how your
own biases may influence your evaluation, and think beyond the message.
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3. Discuss and analyze the listening environment of a place you have worked or an
organization with which you were involved. Overall, was it positive or negative?
What were the norms and expectations for effective listening that contributed to
the listening environment? Who helped set the tone for the listening
environment?
5.4 Listenable Messages and Effective Feedback
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. List strategies for creating listenable messages.
2. Evaluate messages produced by others using competent feedback.
3. Discuss strategies for self-evaluation of communication.
We should not forget that sending messages is an important part of the listening
process. Although we often think of listening as the act of receiving messages,
that passive view of listening overlooks the importance of message construction
and feedback. In the following section, we will learn how speakers can facilitate
listening by creating listenable messages and how listeners help continue the
listening process through feedback for others and themselves.
Creating Listenable Messages
Some of the listening challenges we all face would be diminished if speakers
created listenable messages.Listenable messages are orally delivered messages
that are tailored to be comprehended by a listener.Donald L. Rubin,
“Listenability = Oral-based Discourse + Considerateness,” in Perspectives on
Listening, eds. Andrew D. Wolvin and Carolyn Gwynn Coakley (Norwood, NJ:
Alex Publishing Corporation, 1993), 269. While most of our communication is in
an “oral style,” meaning spoken and intended to be heard, we sometimes create
messages that are unnecessarily complex in ways that impede comprehension.
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Listenable messages can be contrasted with most written messages, which are
meant to be read.
The way we visually process written communication is different from the way we
process orally delivered and aurally received language. Aside from processing
written and spoken messages differently, we also speak and write differently. This
becomes a problem for listening when conventions of written language get
transferred into oral messages. You may have witnessed or experienced this
difficulty if you have ever tried or watched someone else try to orally deliver a
message that was written to be read, not spoken. For example, when students in
my classes try to deliver a direct quote from one of their research sources or
speak verbatim a dictionary definition of a word, they inevitably have fluency
hiccups in the form of unintended pauses or verbal trip-ups that interfere with
their ability to deliver the content. These hiccups consequently make the message
difficult for the audience to receive and comprehend.
This isn’t typically a problem in everyday conversations, because when we speak
impromptu we automatically speak in an oral style. We have a tendency,
however, to stray from our natural oral style when delivering messages that we
have prepared in advance—like speeches. This is because we receive much more
training in creating messages to be read than we do in creating messages to be
spoken. We are usually just expected to pick up the oral style of communicating
through observation and trial and error. Being able to compose and deliver
messages in an oral style, as opposed to a written style, is a crucial skill to develop
in order to be a successful public speaker. Since most people lack specific
instruction in creating messages in an oral rather than written style, you should
be prepared to process messages that aren’t as listenable as you would like them
to be. The strategies for becoming an active listener discussed earlier in this
chapter will also help you mentally repair or restructure a message to make it
more listenable. As a speaker, in order to adapt your message to a listening
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audience and to help facilitate the listening process, you can use the following
strategies to create more listenable messages:
• Use shorter, actively worded sentences.
• Use personal pronouns (“I want to show you…”).
• Use lists or other organizational constructions like problem-solution, pro-
con, or compare-contrast.
• Use transitions and other markers that help a listener navigate your
message (time markers like “today”; order indicators like “first, second,
third”; previews like “I have two things I’d like to say about that”; and
reviews like “So, basically I feel like we should vacation at the lake instead
of the beach because…”).
• Use examples relevant to you and your listener’s actual experiences.
Giving Formal Feedback to Others
The ability to give effective feedback benefits oneself and others. Whether in
professional or personal contexts, positive verbal and nonverbal feedback can
boost others’ confidence, and negative feedback, when delivered constructively,
can provide important perception checking and lead to improvements. Of course,
negative feedback that is not delivered competently can lead to communication
difficulties that can affect a person’s self-esteem and self-efficacy. Although we
rarely give formal feedback to others in interpersonal contexts, it is important to
know how to give this type of feedback, as performance evaluations are common
in a variety of professional, academic, and civic contexts.
It is likely that you will be asked at some point to give feedback to another person
in an academic, professional, or civic context. As companies and organizations
have moved toward more team-based work environments over the past twenty
years, peer evaluations are now commonly used to help assess job performance. I,
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for example, am evaluated every year by two tenured colleagues, my department
chair, and my dean. I also evaluate my graduate teaching assistants and peers as
requested. Since it’s important for us to know how to give competent and relevant
feedback, and since the feedback can be useful for the self-improvement of the
receiver, many students are asked to complete peer evaluations verbally and/or
in writing for classmates after they deliver a speech. The key to good feedback is
to offer constructive criticism, which consists of comments that are specific and
descriptive enough for the receiver to apply them for the purpose of self-
improvement. The following are guidelines I provide my students for giving
feedback, and they are also adaptable to other contexts.
When Giving Feedback to Others
1. Be specific. I often see a lack of specific comments when it comes to
feedback on speech delivery. Students write things like “Eye contact” on a
peer comment sheet, but neither the student nor I know what to do with
the comment. While a comment like “Good eye contact” or “Not enough
eye contact” is more specific, it’s not descriptive enough to make it useful.
2. Be descriptive. I’d be hard pressed to think of a descriptive comment
that isn’t also specific, because the act of adding detail to something
usually makes the point clearer as well. The previous “Not enough eye
contact” comment would be more helpful and descriptive like this: “You
looked at your notes more than you looked at the audience during the first
thirty seconds of your speech.”
3. Be positive. If you are delivering your feedback in writing, pretend that
you are speaking directly to the person and write it the same way.
Comments like “Stop fidgeting” or “Get more sources” wouldn’t likely
come out during verbal feedback, because we know they sound too harsh.
The same tone, however, can be communicated through written feedback.
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Instead, make comments that are framed in such a way as to avoid
defensiveness or hurt feelings.
4. Be constructive. Although we want to be positive in our feedback,
comments like “Good job” aren’t constructive, because a communicator
can’t actually take that comment and do something with it. A comment
like “You were able to explain our company’s new marketing strategy in a
way that even I, as an engineer, could make sense of. The part about our
new crisis communication plan wasn’t as clear. Perhaps you could break it
down the same way you did the marketing strategy to make it clearer for
people like me who are outside the public relations department.” This
statement is positively framed, specific, and constructive because the
speaker can continue to build on the positively reviewed skill by applying it
to another part of the speech that was identified as a place for
improvement.
5. Be realistic. Comments like “Don’t be nervous” aren’t constructive or
realistic. Instead, you could say, “I know the first speech is tough, but
remember that we’re all in the same situation and we’re all here to learn. I
tried the breathing exercises discussed in the book and they helped calm
my nerves. Maybe they’ll work for you, too?” I’ve also had students make
comments like “Your accent made it difficult for me to understand you,”
which could be true but may signal a need for more listening effort since
we all technically have accents, and changing them, if possible at all, would
take considerable time and effort.
6. Be relevant. Feedback should be relevant to the assignment, task, and/or
context. I’ve had students give feedback like “Rad nail polish” and “Nice
smile,” which although meant as compliments are not relevant in formal
feedback unless you’re a fashion consultant or a dentist.
Giving Formal Feedback to Yourself
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An effective way to improve our communication competence is to give ourselves
feedback on specific communication skills. Self-evaluation can be difficult,
because people may think their performance was effective and therefore doesn’t
need critique, or they may become their own worst critic, which can negatively
affect self-efficacy. The key to effective self-evaluation is to identify strengths and
weaknesses, to evaluate yourself within the context of the task, and to set
concrete goals for future performance. What follows are guidelines that I give my
students for self-evaluation of their speeches.
When Giving Feedback to Yourself
1. Identify strengths and weaknesses. We have a tendency to be our
own worst critics, so steer away from nit-picking or overfocusing on one
aspect of your communication that really annoys you and sticks out to you.
It is likely that the focus of your criticism wasn’t nearly as noticeable or
even noticed at all by others. For example, I once had a student write a
self-critique of which about 90 percent focused on how his face looked red.
Although that was really salient for him when he watched his video, I don’t
think it was a big deal for the audience members.
2. Evaluate yourself within the context of the task or assignment
guidelines. If you are asked to speak about your personal life in a
creative way, don’t spend the majority of your self-evaluation critiquing
your use of gestures. People have a tendency to overanalyze aspects of
their delivery, which usually only accounts for a portion of the overall
effectiveness of a message, and underanalyze their presentation of key
ideas and content. If the expectation was to present complex technical
information in a concrete way, you could focus on your use of examples
and attempts to make the concepts relevant to the listeners.
3. Set goals for next time. Goal setting is important because most of us
need a concrete benchmark against which to evaluate our progress. Once
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goals are achieved, they can be “checked off” and added to our ongoing
skill set, which can enhance confidence and lead to the achievement of
more advanced goals.
4. Revisit goals and assess progress at regular intervals. We will not
always achieve the goals we set, so it is important to revisit the goals
periodically to assess our progress. If you did not meet a goal, figure out
why and create an action plan to try again. If you did achieve a goal, try to
build on that confidence to meet future goals.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
• To create listenable messages, which are orally delivered messages tailored to be
comprehended by a listener, avoid long, complex sentences; use personal
pronouns; use lists or other organizational constructions; use transitions and
other markers to help your listener navigate your message; and use relevant
examples.
• Getting integrated: Although we rarely give formal feedback in interpersonal
contexts, we give informal feedback regularly to our relational partners that can
enhance or detract from their self-esteem and affect our relationships. While we
also give informal feedback in academic, professional, and civic contexts, it is
common practice to give formal feedback in the form of performance evaluations
or general comments on an idea, product, or presentation.
• When giving feedback to others, be specific, descriptive, positive, constructive,
realistic, and relevant.
• When giving feedback to yourself, identify strengths and weaknesses, evaluate
yourself within the contexts of the task or assignment, set goals for next time,
and revisit goals to access progress.
E X E R C I S E S
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 394
1. Apply the strategies for creating listenable messages to a speech you recently
gave or a speech you are currently working on. Which strategies did/will you
employ? Why?
2. Recall an instance in which someone gave you feedback that didn’t meet the
guidelines that are listed in this section. In what ways did the person’s feedback
fall short of the guidelines, and what could the person have done to improve the
feedback?
3. Using the guidelines for self-evaluation (feedback to self), assess one of your
recent speeches. If you haven’t given a speech recently, assess another
communication skill using the same guidelines, such as your listening abilities or
your skill at providing constructive criticism.
- Chapter 5 - Listening
- 5.1 Understanding How and Why We Listen
- The Listening Process
- Receiving
- Interpreting
- Recalling
- Evaluating
- Responding
- The Importance of Listening
- Listening Types
- Discriminative Listening
- Informational Listening
- Critical Listening
- Empathetic Listening
- Listening Styles
- People-Oriented Listeners
- Action-Oriented Listeners
- Content-Oriented Listeners
- Time-Oriented Listeners
- KEY TAKEAWAYS
- 5.3 Improving Listening Competence
- Listening Competence at Each Stage of the Listening Process
- Active Listening
- Active Listening Can Help Overcome Barriers to Effective Listening
- Active Listening Behaviors
- Becoming a Better Critical Listener
- Other Tips to Help You Become a Better Critical Listener
- Becoming a Better Empathetic Listener
- Becoming a Better Contextual Listener
- Listening in Professional Contexts
- Listening in Relational Contexts
- Listening and Culture
- Listening and Gender
- KEY TAKEAWAYS