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Communicating for Success, 2nd Edition by Cheryl Hamilton, Bonnie Creel and Tony Kroll

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Chapter 3: Listening

Overview

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

3.1 What is the definition of listening, and what are the stages involved in effective listening as well as several memory tips to improve listening?

3.2 Why is listening important, and what specific benefits does listening offer in our everyday lives?

3.3 What are the major barriers that complicate effective listening for most people, what are four poor listening habits, and what role does a person's listening style inventory play in listening effectiveness?

3.4 What is informational listening, in what listening situations is it needed most, and which specific skills are suggested for its effective use?

3.5 What is critical listening, in what listening situations is it needed most, and which specific skills are suggested for its effective use?

3.6 What is empathic listening, in what listening situations is it needed most, and which specific skills are suggested for its effective use?

3.7 What listening information and skills covered in this chapter relate specifically to your career?

AFTER STUDYING THIS CHAPTER, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO …

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Incorporate several memory tips to improve your listening.

Identify and avoid major barriers to effective listening.

Pinpoint poor listening habits that you have and make and follow a plan to overcome them.

Recognize and use at least two listening skills needed in the informational, critical, and empathic contexts.

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Credit: Shutterstock.com/ImageFlow.

Figure 3.1

Introduction

We are focusing on the decoding process of listening in this chapter because the role of decoding is often overlooked when people attempt to improve their communication. We tend to be much more concerned about encoding (how we are going to effectively convey our own ideas) than decoding (how we are going to understand the ideas of others). Effective listening, as is true of all types of decoding, requires effort. However, before you apply Chapter 3 concepts to your own life, see if you can apply them to Julie and Waan in our Unit I Scenario. For example, although the two roommates seem to be hearing each other just fine, they may not be listening to each other, causing a lack of connection. Look for specific questions to answer in the margins at various spots throughout this chapter. Refer to the scenario on page 2 to refresh your memory as needed. Be prepared to share your answers with one or more classmates.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

3.1 What is the definition of listening, and what are the stages involved in effective listening as well as several memory tips to improve listening?

What is Listening?

If we were to ask Waan and Julie whether they consider themselves to be good listeners, each would likely say, "Yes." Yet, if we were to ask them to judge the listening ability of the other person, they probably wouldn't be as positive. While most of us tend to think we are better listeners than most, we also take our own listening for granted—it just comes naturally. Effective listening requires much skill and training. The payoff for improving listening skills can be increased job success. Johnston and Reed (2017) studied different units of a single company and found that the employees from units that identified a good listening climate were also the units that showed improvement in sales and net income.

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"LISTENING" DEFINED

First, let us make sure we understand what is meant by listening. Listening is the active process of constructing meaning from spoken messages through attention to the verbal and nonverbal codes that accompany the messages. Notice that our definition says that listening is an active process. Listening is not the passive activity that many of us assume it to be. There is a big difference between hearing and listening. You do not have to exert any effort to hear; hearing is going to happen any time you are in the presence of sound waves, if you have a fully functioning ear drum. Listening requires you to do something with those sound waves. Listening requires effort.

Of course, to listen we will need a verbal message. However, there is more to listening than just paying attention to the words that are spoken. Good listeners also know how important it is to tune into the visual and vocal nonverbal messages that accompany the verbal code. It is these nonverbal messages (discussed in Chapters 1 and 5) that help us more accurately interpret the message. An interesting article was published by the International Listening Association where five different communication scholars who specialize in listening provided their response to "Listening is …" (Purdy et al., 2017). They help us see listening as a dialogue where we "share and explore issues with others" (p. 6), as an opportunity to "experience the person I am listening to in a slightly new light" (p. 8), as being "vulnerable and … open to change" (p. 10), a "culturally rich collaborative interaction" (p. 13), and a "cognitive process" (p. 14).

UNIT I SCENARIO

Question #7

In which stage of listening did most of Julie's listening difficulties occur? How do you know? Be specific and be prepared to share your results if asked.

STAGES OF LISTENING

Understanding the listening process is easier when you are aware of the basic stages of listening—attending, understanding, responding, and remembering. After reading Chapter 2, you already know the first three steps of listening because they are the same as the three steps in perception—see if you recall these:

First, we select available data by "becoming aware of" or registering a small amount of the stimuli in the environment—in listening we call this the attending stage. When we listen, we attend to things that are of interest or importance to us and tune out other less interesting or less important stimuli. Such factors as our age, gender, culture, and biases also determine the stimuli to which we attend.

Second, we organize this data into a form that we can more easily use and remember—in listening we call this the understanding stage. There are many factors that make this stage difficult, such as frame-of-reference differences, different meanings for words and actions, attitudes toward the speaker, and even listener fatigue or information overload.

Third, we interpret the data by adding meaning and making predictions—in listening, we call this the responding stage. Unless senders know what meaning you derived from each message, they have no way to correct any misperceptions that will get in the way of achieving the shared meaning that is the goal of effective communication. Listeners respond in various ways. If the situation is too formal for a verbal response, they will likely show their agreement, disagreement, or confusion by nonverbal facial expressions (such as nodding their heads or frowning) or by vocal sounds (such as laughter, groans, or sighs). In our discussion of nonverbal communication in Chapter 5, we will discuss how to interpret audience reactions.

Fourth, we work to remember what we have heard. Now this may be the hardest part of the whole process. Do you doubt that remembering is really part of listening? Consider this: Have you ever told others that you wanted them to do something, only to have them fail to do it and then claim that they "just forgot"? How do you respond to this? If you are like most people, you either accuse that person directly (or complain to someone else) that the person "didn't listen." It seems clear that, to most of us, remembering and listening are linked. However much we may claim that our forgetfulness is due to age or a lack of talent that some people are presumably just born with, the fact is that, much of the time, our "forgetfulness" is really the result of not fully listening.

Researchers tell us that even when listeners really try to remember, most will remember only about 10–25 percent the next day or a week later (Wolff et al., 1983). Of course, we are more likely to remember information that is related to our interests, well organized, repeated, delivered effectively, and accompanied with quality visual aids. Even so, poor listeners fail to use the most

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important memory aid—transferring information from short-term to long-term memory (Cowan, 2001; Miller, 1994; Schab & Crowder, 1989). Short-term memory is memory that holds information for 30 seconds or less; long-term memory is memory that lasts a lifetime. Consider this example: Your roommate asks you to pick up three items at the store, but, by the time you get there, you have forgotten what you went for. This happens when you don't transfer information from short-term to long-term memory. Although memory is only one of the four stages of listening, it is certainly an important one. The Developing Skills feature in this chapter will provide some specifics on how to improve your memory.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

3.2 Why is listening important, and what specific benefits does listening offer in our everyday lives?

Importance of Listening

Now that you know what listening is and the elements or stages that constitute this essential communication skill, you may be wondering why a whole chapter is devoted to the topic. "After all," you may be thinking, "listening is something that I do all the time. Surely all the listening I have to do will make me a good listener." The fact that you do so much listening in your everyday life is one of the reasons that we need to examine the subject a little more closely. Many scholars have estimated the amount of time people spend in various communication activities and have concluded that listening occupies much more of our time than any other activity. For example, employees at work spend around 60 to 80 percent of their time listening (Wolvin & Coakley, 1991) while college students spend around 24 percent of their time listening and 26 percent in related forms of listening as indicated in Figure 3.2 (Janusik & Wolvin, 2009). Despite the amount of listening you do, most of you would probably agree that practice does not always mean perfection. Almost any improvement we can make in our listening skills has the potential to yield very real benefits.

APPLY WHAT YOU KNOW: YOUR LISTENING ABILITY

Now that you are aware of the definition of listening and the basic stages in the listening process, consider the following questions:

How would you describe your listening ability: poor, average, good, or excellent?

To verify your opinion, take one or both of these online listening quizzes: The listening quiz from Witt Communications at http://wittcom.com/the-listening-quiz/ or The Mind Tools listening quiz at www.mindtools.com/pages/article/listening- quiz.htm. Both free quizzes will total your score and report your results.

Do you agree with the quiz results? Why or why not? Give at least one example to support your opinion.

Figure 3.2: Daily communication by college students

LISTENING HELPS US DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS

Listening is an important part of developing and maintaining relationships. You know that when any relationship is in its early stages, you do a lot of concentrated listening in order to get to know each other and reduce any uncertainty you have about the other person. Unfortunately, once a relationship is established, the amount of quality listening begins to decline. When people lament that they are being "taken for granted," oftentimes this is related to the feeling that the other person is no longer really listening. Indeed, good listeners are valued and cherished as friends and life-mates.

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LISTENING HELPS US IN OUR CAREERS

Listening is something that will be expected of you in any job or career you might choose. At the very least, your supervisor will expect you to be able to follow directions and will attribute your failure to do so to your "not listening." As the supervisor, you will want to create a positive listening environment because employees are found to be more attached and committed in organizations where they perceive a positive listening environment (Reed et al., 2016). A survey of industrial salespeople found failure to listen as the main reason for lack of job success (Ingram et al., 1992). In some careers, listening to customers or clients will be part of your daily work. The best salespeople know that listening to customers is essential in determining what products or services will best meet the customer's needs, not to mention helping to determine what sales strategy has the potential to be most persuasive. Customers in one survey ranked listening as the most important skill needed by salespeople (Boyle, 1999). See Spotlight on the Value of Listening later in this chapter for more specifics. Pullins et al. (2017) found that salespeople could identify that listening was important, but that they were not trained for the skills necessary to shift from what their own customers were describing as a monologue over to a "dialogical two-way exchange of ideas" between the salesperson and the customer.

DEVELOPING SKILLS: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

Although poor listening habits are a result of poor decoding skills, to improve your memory you will need to focus on your encoding skills as well. This feature provides two encoding tips for improving your memory:

Memory Tip #1

Learn to transfer important information from your short-term memory (STM) to your long-term memory (LTM). Our STM is intended to hold only small amounts for short-term storage. Miller (1994) suggested that short-term memory holds between five and nine bits or chunks of information–a bit could be a letter, number, sound, word, or sentence. More recent research suggests that most of us can hold only four bits or chunks in our short-term memories without getting overloaded (Cowan, 2001). Not only does our STM hold a small amount of information, but, unless we take notes or rehearse this information in some way within 30 seconds, we will forget it (Mather, 2016). It is important for listeners to learn how to transfer information from their STM to their LTM. Try using the following three steps when listening to speakers:

First, identify key words as you listen. Don't be tempted to listen for or remember complete sentences. Instead, narrow each key idea down to only one to four words to help you recall the complete idea later. Speakers who use PowerPoint slides make it easier to identify key words.

Second, write down the key words if you have paper handy. If no paper is available, locate each word (or image of the word) on a body part. For example, remember that STM = 30 seconds by locating it on your left foot and LTM = lifetime on right foot; or when going shopping, locate bread on the left foot, jelly on the right foot, and milk on the right hand. You can also locate items using a familiar room (bread on window, jelly on window ledge, milk on door knob, and so on). These memory techniques were used by ancient Greek and Roman orators such as Cicero and Quintilian and discussed in Quintilian's De Institutio Oratoria. A story is also told about Simonides, a Greek lyric poet, who had just left a banquet hall when the ceiling collapsed burying the guests and making the bodies impossible to identify. Simonides was able to recall where each guest was seated, thereby locating the bodies for family members (Boorstin, 1983, pp. 480–481).

Third, constantly summarize the key words in your mind, and refer back to your notes when necessary. This form of rehearsal, which transfers information from STM to LTM, will not keep you from laughing at jokes and appreciating other facts and supporting materials presented. In fact, by using these three steps, you are probably paying closer attention than usual. Since you can think so much faster than the typical speaker talks, you have plenty of spare time to transfer information to your LTM and still daydream just a bit.

Memory Tip #2

Learn to retrieve stored information from your LTM. Research on how to improve the memories of witnesses to crimes (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992) resulted in memory techniques and principles that allowed "witnesses to recall 63% more information than was obtained with the standard police interview format" (Kosslyn & Rosenberg, 2009, p. 319). Try some of these following techniques when trying to remember stored information (Kosslyn & Rosenberg, 2009):

Recall the context where you learned the information. You will recall more LTM if you can remember where you were when you learned the stored information. Think of details such as the occasion, the weather, any strong emotions you may have felt, and so on. For example, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing when you first heard about the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York City. Also, you have likely experienced a random smell or sound that brought back a long forgotten memory.

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Concentrate. It is important to keep from becoming distracted because recalling information from LTM is hard work. Find a quiet place, and focus on the task at hand.

Expect to try several times. Don't give up if your first attempt at remembering an item doesn't work. Researchers have found that you are more likely to remember something if you try several times to remember it (Roediger & Thorpe, 1978). That is why it is easier to learn things for an exam if you spend several times working on it rather than "cramming" the night before.

Grasp any fragments. To help recall specific details, think about what characteristics fit with the information. If you are trying to recall a person's name, think about the person's characteristics (features, size, style of clothes, ethnic background) and the characteristics of the name (was it short or long; was it unusual; what was the first letter; and so on). These fragments of information will likely lead you to the actual name.

If you concentrate on these two memory tips at least twice each week while you are taking this course, by the time the semester is finished, you will have an improved memory. First, you will be better able to remember information while listening (because you can transfer it from STM to LTM). Second, you will be better able to retrieve information stored in your LTM.

LISTENING HELPS US BECOME BETTER CITIZENS

Listening is also necessary if we are to be informed and responsible citizens, capable of making the decisions that will affect our family and our community. In our country, people who seek political office know that they must appeal to the citizenry in order to win elections. You will be asked throughout your lifetime to hear persuasive messages and cast your vote according to your beliefs about what candidates and what policies seem to be most supportable. Poor listeners are often frightened by these messages, largely because they fear that they cannot comprehend what is being said. They experience a phenomenon known as receiver apprehension. It is possible to experience receiver apprehension in any type of listening situation, but it is certainly common whenever the speaker seems to have an abundance of knowledge about topics that are not part of our own day-to-day experience. In our country, people who are uninformed about political issues are not uninformed because of an absence of information. In fact, they may be overwhelmed by all the information that is available, and they may choose to screen it out in order to avoid having to do any real thinking about it. This, of course, is not a desirable approach for citizens of a representative democracy to adopt. Learning how to listen in these situations is part of the process of earning the privileges granted to us by our governmental system.

APPLY WHAT YOU KNOW: IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

Apply what you know about the importance of listening to these critical thinking questions:

In which area or areas in your life do you use listening the most effectively (in personal relationships, in a job or career, as a citizen in society, or in maintaining your mental health)? Give at least two personal examples to explain your answers.

In which area in your life are your listening skills in need of the most improvement (in relationships, in a job or career, as a citizen, or in maintaining your mental health)? Give a personal example to explain your answer.

LISTENING HELPS US DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN OUR MENTAL HEALTH

One of the first things commentators mentioned after the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007, was, "Didn't anyone know the gunman was in serious trouble? Didn't anyone really listen to him?" Listening helps us develop and maintain our mental health. According to Corrections Today (Walker & Sakai, 2006) Hawaiian inmates are taught the life skill of listening as part of emotional intelligence training. The success of the program is indicated by one inmate who said, "We were given a gift, the gift of learning to listen" (p. 61).

When people really listen to us, they listen without thinking about personal views, make no judgments, and speak only to clarify what we are saying. This level of listening, called focused listening (Farquharson, 2006), offers "empathy, sympathy, creativity, and even compassion" (p. 61). When someone listens to us at this level, we feel validated and important because the listener was willing to take the time required to really listen to us; as a result, our selfesteem and positive mental outlook are improved, whether we are children, teens, adults, or elderly. According to the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), "Speaking and listening are important for developing fulfillment, identity and self-esteem" (Eldred, 2007, p. 7).

Barriers to Listening

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One way to improve listening skills is to become aware of some major listening barriers. Once we are aware of them, we can minimize them. Although there are many barriers to listening, we will look at those that cause the most serious problems: noise, information processing, cultural differences, gender orientation, and poor listening habits. Vocabulary, which is also a barrier to listening, is covered in Chapter 4. As you read, see which of these barriers have complicated your listening effectiveness.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

NOISE BARRIER

Noise, which can be divided into three types, is definitely a barrier to listening. Noise can be external, internal, or semantic.

EXTERNAL NOISE One obvious complicating factor to effective listening is the presence of external noise. As we learned when we discussed the communication model, external noise refers to the literal noises that exist in our environment. Sometimes your attention will shift to other sounds in the environment, particularly if the sounds seem to have greater importance to you at the moment. You have undoubtedly also experienced the problems that arise in trying to carry on a conversation with someone in a setting where there are other sights and sounds around you. Striking up a conversation with someone in a club where a loud band is playing is an exercise in futility. In such a situation, you would probably suggest that you move to a quieter place to be able to hear each other, not to mention actually listen to each other.

UNIT I SCENARIO

Question #8

What specific listening barriers seemed to cause decoding difficulties for Waan and Julie? Identify at least two for each person. Give reasons for why you think your barriers are correct.

INTERNAL NOISE A second type of noise, internal noise, is even more difficult to overcome than external noise. You will recall that internal noise refers to any number of things that you may be experiencing physiologically or psychologically that cause you to have difficulty focusing on messages. It is difficult to listen to another person when you are ill, angry, worried, or even excited about something. The presence of such conditions or thoughts can cause your attention to shift to something other than the message the speaker is trying to convey.

In "Turn Off That Racket!", composer Philip Glass (2002) offers the following suggestions for quieting internal noises:

Don't focus on petty matters. They can clog your brain.

Throw useless information out the window.

Don't dwell on any thought or emotion.

Approach listening with an open mind.

Another type of internal noise deals with information and how we process it internally. Sometimes there is just too much information coming from too many directions for us to process effectively—we call this information overload. If we get too much of it, we tend to shut down and essentially stop listening. This is especially true if the information is complicated or new to us. But sometimes there is too little information or it comes to us too slowly to process effectively—we call this information underload. Scholars have determined that no matter how fast a speaker can talk, listeners are capable of processing several times the amount of information contained in the message. In fact, the average person speaks only 100–150 words per minute; yet you as a college student easily can process 600 and more words per minute, if anyone could speak that rapidly (Wolvin & Coakley, 1988, p. 208). At first glance, this might seem to be an advantage for us in the attempt to listen well. However, since we can grasp what is being said so rapidly, we have some "spare" time while the speaker catches up. Instead of using this spare time to summarize the material or analyze the speaker's evidence, most of us tend to get bored, daydream, and even stop listening completely.

SEMANTIC NOISE A third type of noise that can complicate effective listening is semantic noise. This is the problem that occurs when people hold different understandings of words. This idea will be discussed more thoroughly when we look closely at verbal communication. For now, realize that words often mean very different things to different people. Some words trigger

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emotional responses in people that can create a kind of internal noise that interferes with listening. A person who has recently experienced the death of a loved one may respond to any form of the word "death" in a way that precludes their hearing anything else the speaker is saying. People hear words such as "liberal" or "conservative" in sharply different ways, depending on their frames of reference.

CULTURE BARRIER

Credit: Shutterstock.com/Rawpixel.com.

Figure 3.3: When listening to people from different cultures, greater attention and concentration are required

In the previous chapters, our discussion of culture looked at the dimensions of lowcontext/high-context differences. When determining the meaning of a message, people from low-context cultures pay careful attention to the actual words and only minor attention to the context in which the message occurs. On the other hand, people from high-context cultures pay less attention to the actual words and more to the context, such as the groups to which the speaker belongs (community, family, or organizations), the speaker's status and age, the background and history of the topic or situation, and the speaker's nonverbal gestures and expressions. High-context cultures consider words as dangerous tools and are very concerned that words not cause a loss of face for the speaker or the audience members—therefore, the fewer words, the better. Lowcontext cultures are more concerned with telling it like it is and have less concern with saving face.

So how does listening differ among cultures? Not all cultures view listening in the same way. High-context cultures such as Japan and Mexico believe that it is the listener's responsibility to achieve understanding. As a result, they expect messages and instructions to be brief and even fairly vague and are insulted when too much information is given. On the other hand, low- context cultures such as Canada and the United States believe that it is the speaker's responsibility to make sure the listener understands. As a result, they expect messages to be detailed and carefully spelled out and are frustrated when messages are too brief. According to Brownell (2013), "Listening in cross-cultural contexts takes greater attention and concentration than it does when interacting with members of your own language community" (p. 351).

Janusik and Imhof (2017) studied the listening behavior of people from Germany, Finland, Bulgaria, Japan, and the U.S. Their findings suggest that women from Japan have a complex notion of listening with a focus on relationship building. By contrast, Europeans associate listening with dimensions of learning and information acquisition. The recommendation from these researchers is that when individuals "from different cultural backgrounds interact, they might be communicating based on quite distinct assumptions … [that lead to] misunderstanding and confusion" (p. 94).

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GENDER BARRIER

Gender differences can cause listening problems. For example, research shows that men talk longer and more often than women, are more likely to interrupt, use communication for competitive purposes, listen to solve problems, respond to conversations with minimal responses, tell stories instead of asking questions, use "I" more than "we," and are listened to more by both genders (Tannen, 1995; Wood & Fixmer-Oraiz, 2017). Women, on the other hand, use communication for cooperative purposes, listen to show understanding and enhance relationships, decode nonverbal communication better than men, ask more questions, interrupt less, give more personal examples, and use "we" more than "I" (Tannen, 1995; Wood & Fixmer-Oraiz, 2017). Both men and women managers use tag questions (such as "Don't you agree?") at the end of comments often to soften their comments and invite participation (Calnan & Davidson, 1998; Wood & Fixmer-Oraiz, 2017).

Although it is obvious that differences in listening do exist between men and women, the reason why is not as obvious. Before we can determine whether these listening differences are sex-linked (biological) or culturally based (learned behaviors), more research is needed. In any case, if we are to improve our listening, we need to be aware of these differences. It may be that the context of the communication should determine the listening style we choose. Heath (1991) found that androgynous people (people who use both "male" and "female" characteristics as needed) are the most successful in the workplace and at home. If we understand the communication principles discussed in this text and are considerate and flexible in their use, our gender differences will become less of a problem.

ETHICS BARRIER

John Shotter (2009) suggests that a problem with listening is when we listen to find opportunities to add our own point of view. In other words, a focus on "me" and how "I'm going to add" to what you are saying. He suggests a shift to "other" is a way to enhance ethics in listening. Some scholars have added to this idea by suggesting ethical listening is about giving up what we already know and being open to "your" ideas and "your" worldviews (Lipari, 2009). Tompkins (2009) suggests that listening is how we awaken moral sensitivity, especially as it relates to how we understand others. As you can see, all of these approaches to ethical listening require that we set aside our predispositions and work hard at understanding the uniqueness of the person with whom we are communicating. Ethical listening brings to mind the saying, "walk a mile in someone else's shoes."

TECHNOLOGY BARRIER

You will recall from Chapter 1 that the nonverbal codes in communication carry more meaning than the verbal codes. When we look at communication that is facilitated through technology (e.g., text messaging, instant messaging, email, discussion boards, social media), the nonverbal codes are missing. Scholars use the term cues filtered out to account for the important codes that get eliminated when communicating through technology (Walther, 1992). Even when attempts are made to add emoticons, such as when we are trying to use sarcasm in a text message, the risk of miscommunication is high.

You will recall from earlier in this chapter that listening accounts for about half of a student's daily communication. You might be wondering how much "time" is devoted to listening in a computer-mediated environment. Wise and colleagues (2013) found that participants in discussion boards were devoting three-quarters of their time to listening behaviors. These researchers offer four dimensions to computer-mediated listening: the depth that students use when reading comments; the breadth or number of different posts that are viewed; the frequency and length of participation; and, revisiting the original post to reflect on their own statement and the comments from others (Wise et al., 2013).

POOR LISTENING HABITS BARRIER

All of us have developed certain unproductive listening habits that prevent us from attending to and understanding the messages that senders try to convey to us. Poor listening habits are the result of poor decoding skills. Once you identify that you have one or more of these poor listening habits, it is possible to make necessary changes that will result in improved communication. See which of the following poor listening habits cause you the most difficulty and probably should be changed: imitation listening, selective and insulated listening, defensive listening, or combative listening.

IMITATION LISTENING Imitation listening is false listening. This is what you are doing when you pretend to listen by exhibiting behaviors that are commonly associated with good listening, while simultaneously attending to some other stimulus in the environment or to your intrapersonal dialogue. Nodding your head, making eye contact, making occasional noises that sound like you are affirming the speaker's message—all of these are the hallmarks of imitation listening. Perhaps you can recall a time when a professor called your name in the middle of a lecture to ask what you thought about the ideas just presented. The need to say, "I'm sorry, could you repeat what you just said?" is a dead giveaway that you have not been actively listening. If you are often guilty of imitation listening, consider how uncomfortable you feel when you have been "caught," as well as how you feel when you realize that the person you are taking with is also an imitation listener who has apparently not heard a word you have said either.

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SELECTIVE LISTENING AND INSULATED LISTENING Selective listening and insulated listening are two closely related unproductive listening habits that you may be guilty of at times. Listening to only part of a message is known as selective listening. An example of this would be asking your roommate if you can borrow the car for the evening. However, when he says, "Sure," you stop listening. You don't hear him also say to be sure to fill the tank because he has to leave for an interview early in the morning and to leave the car keys on the kitchen counter when you return so he won't have to wake you. When your friend wakes you the next morning and is upset that the tank is empty and the keys are nowhere to be found, you may insist that he never said any of that.

Sometimes a message may contain information that we would rather not have to deal with, so we use insulated listening and don't hear what we don't want to hear. For example, when a physician has to deliver bad news to a patient or family member, the listener is often unable to hear the whole message because of the emotional turmoil. Many physicians learn that it is best to deliver the bare essentials and then allow some time for the message to sink in before attempting to expand on the information (Buckman, 1992; Friedrichsen & Milberg, 2006). It is a good thing when speakers take this approach, although not all speakers do. Therefore, listeners need to be aware of the possibility that they may have failed to hear the whole message and take steps to clarify their understanding.

DEFENSIVE LISTENING Have you ever known people who seem to be easily offended and tend to interpret innocent remarks as though they were criticisms? Perhaps the problem is that they are defensive listeners. Sometimes people have insecurities within their self-concepts that make them feel that it is necessary to be on guard with other people. Other times, the nature of a relationship may be such that one person feels that he or she is generally the target of criticism from the other. Whatever the causes may be, defensive listening is a barrier to shared meaning. If this describes you, it may be useful to examine the source of your feelings that cause you to defend yourself from the verbal messages of others. If you determine that you may be hypersensitive and a defensive listener, it may be difficult for you to establish high-quality interpersonal relationships. Your friend or partner may find it easier not to say anything to you rather than risk offending you, which makes the relationship hard to maintain.

COMBATIVE LISTENING Combative listening occurs when a person listens very intently to senders’ messages for the purpose of attacking them, often by using their own words against them as soon as they are finished speaking. These listeners often make an elaborate display of their listening while disguising their readiness to attack. This form of listening has great usefulness for prosecuting attorneys and debaters, but it is damaging to interpersonal relationships. Certainly, close listening is a desirable skill; in this case, it is the attitude of the listener that is called into question. Listening should be approached as an act aimed at understanding the other person's meanings, not as an opportunity for combat. It might help to determine which poor listening habits you have that need changing. Use the Making Theory Practical feature in this chapter to analyze your listening style. To overcome the above barriers to effective listening we need to recognize that not all listening situations are the same. Just as carpenters need tools and skills to effectively address a variety of situations in construction, so listeners need a variety of tools and skills to effectively address various listening situations in communication. We will cover three main types of listening (informational, critical, and empathic), discuss what situations require each type of listening, and suggest specific skills needed for successful use of each listening type.

APPLY WHAT YOU KNOW: LISTENING BARRIERS AND STYLES

Now that you are aware of poor listening habits and varying listening styles, answer at least one the following set of questions:

What do you consider to be the two main listening problems of college students? Of parents? Of professors? Discuss your thinking by giving examples to illustrate your answers.

Are you more of a people-, action-, content-, or time-oriented listener (see page 83)? Support your answer with at least two personal examples.

Informational Listening

Informational listening is the type of listening that is required when the sender's goal is to convey information, and the receiver's goal is to comprehend the information. A classroom is a context in which informational listening should be the goal. Other informational listening situations include the workplace (where training frequently occurs, as supervisors explain how tasks are to be accomplished) and the medical consultation (where physicians or other healthcare professionals explain the causes and processes of illness and the procedures required for treatment). To be perceived as one who is good at informational listening requires skill at adapting to the situation since "variations in organizational situations complicate listening tasks" (Barbour, 2017, p. 2).

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LEARNING OBJECTIVE

3.4 What is informational listening, in what listening situations is it needed most, and which specific skills are suggested for its effective use?

For informational listening to be effective, several skills or behaviors are needed. For the purposes of this discussion, we will use the classroom as our model context, although the skills discussed here have applicability to other informational listening situations as well.

PREPARE TO LISTEN

The first step to being an effective informational listener is to come prepared to listen. In the classroom, having read the assigned material before coming to class can improve your ability to listen by reducing the potential for receiver apprehension that occurs when the topic being discussed is unfamiliar to you. Coming prepared to listen also means arriving after having had sufficient rest and nutrition to enable you to shut out hunger and fatigue as sources of internal physiological noise. The typical college student gets six to seven hours of sleep per night but should be getting nine hours. Where do you fit in? (Hosek et al., 2004; Phillips et al., 2017). It is also important to eliminate sources of internal psychological noise, although this is not as easily accomplished as getting enough sleep and eating a proper meal. As one student suggested, "You need to put your thoughts on pause." It may help to recognize that during the class period there is little you can do about the things that concern you in your private life. If you make a commitment to listen, promising yourself that you will deal with your problems at a given point after classes are over for the day, you may find it easier to focus in the present moment.

MAKING THEORY PRACTICAL: LISTENING STYLES PROFILE

When you listen to others, whether at a formal presentation or informally with colleagues, family, or friends, are you aware of your listening style? Are you more people-, action-, content-, or time-oriented? Here's a clue–which of the following thoughts sound more like you?

"Great. I really relate to that personal example!"

"So, what's the bottom line–am I supposed to guess the purpose?"

"Now this is what I like–details!"

"I don't have all day–get to the point."

ORIGINAL THEORISTS

The Listening Styles Profile (LSP-16) developed by Kitty Watson, Larry Barker, and James Weaver (1995) was revised by Barker and Watson in 2000. The LSP is not actually called a theory although it has many of the characteristics of a theory. According to Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel (2017), communication theories "provide a set of useful tools for seeing the everyday processes and experiences of communication through new lenses." The researchers found that it is possible to divide our listening styles into four significantly different types and that 60 percent of people prefer listening with a single style (Weaver et al., 1995).

LISTENING STYLES (WATSON, ET AL., 1995)

People-oriented listeners are relationship-oriented. They pay attention to people's feelings and emotions and look for personal information. They are interested in discovering common ground between themselves and the speaker.

Action-oriented listeners are interested in organized, structured presentations. They want the purpose spelled out clearly and accurately and are interested in what actions are recommended because they like to do something with the information they hear.

Content-oriented listeners revel in details, facts, and evidence and are very concerned with accuracy of the facts presented. They are more interested in the message than the message giver.

Time-oriented listeners hate to waste time. They aren't interested in details but instead want a quick, to-the-point, "sound bite" approach to the message. Time is money to them, and they don't want to waste it.

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Figure 3.4

PRACTICAL USES

So how does the Listening Styles Profile help your communication?

First, being able to identify your own listening style will help you understand why you have problems listening to certain types of messages. For example, a content-oriented listener will find it difficult to pay attention to a people-oriented speaker giving personal examples rather than detailed and documented facts.

Second, knowing that there are four distinct types of listeners will help you understand that not all people listen in the same way. In a close relationship, identifying and responding to the listening styles of each other is a step toward improving communication. Can you imagine a family of four with all four styles represented?

Third, once you know your own style, you can adapt to the styles of others:

– For a people-oriented listener– show you care. Establish a common ground by offering personal examples; make direct eye-contact and show you are listening,

– For an action-oriented listener– present a clear purpose with action. Make your facts clear and organized; clarify the action needed or ask what action they recommend.

– For a content-oriented listener– give facts with details. Don't forget to cite evidence; give a complete and accurate picture.

– For a time-oriented listener–be brief and to-the-point. Mention that you know the person has time constraints; begin with the summary followed by supporting reasons.

Source: Watson et al. (1995).

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Figure 3.5: Does this student appear to be prepared to listen?

AVOID PREJUDGING

Informational listening requires that you avoid prejudging the speaker. Certainly there are some speakers who are more appealing to you as human beings. However, the quality of information is not necessarily linked to the appeal of a person providing the information. There may be speakers whose competence you question for good reason—we are not suggesting that you overlook such deficiencies, for it would be foolish not to take that into account. However, when your reaction to a speaker is based on personal biases or prejudices, or when you simply find the speaker's personality not one to which you are naturally drawn, you need to be especially careful that you do not let those preconceptions prevent you from hearing the message as it was intended.

MENTALLY ORGANIZE, SUMMARIZE, AND LINK INFORMATION

It is wise to make good use of the lag created by the phenomenon of processing rate discussed earlier and make the best use of your time by mentally organizing, summarizing, and linking new materials presented. In the classroom, your professor may have already prepared the lesson in an outline format with the main parts clearly expressed; you may even have the advantage of having a PowerPoint presentation that accompanies the lecture and clearly spells out the main points and subpoints of the lecture. However, you should not allow the presence of any visual aids to permit you to become a lazy listener! Merely copying the material from the slides into your notebook does not constitute active and engaged listening. If you are fortunate enough to have those aids, stay committed to the listening process by continually working to make connections between what you are writing and what you have previously learned.

UNIT I SCENARIO

Question #9

Which of the four listening styles dis cussed in the Making Theory Practical box (page 83) seem to best describe roommates Julie and Waan? How would knowing this information help them improve their communication?

PERSONALIZE INFORMATION WHILE LISTENING

One way to improve your informational listening is to find ways to personalize the information you are receiving. This means that you should try to find ways in which the material is relevant to your own life and experience. How you personalize your listening often depends on your own listening style—are you more people-oriented, more action-oriented, more content- oriented, or more time-oriented? To find out more about your listening style, read the Making Theory Practical box on page 83. There is likely one style that you gravitate toward when listening; once you know this style, finding the correct personal

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information should be easier. Of course, as you relate the material to your life, be careful that you don't shift your attention from the speaker to your personal situation to such an extent that you succumb to internal psychological noise.

TAKE SKILLFUL NOTES

Every student knows the importance of taking notes. However, not all note-taking is equally beneficial. Skillful note-taking requires some effort, but it yields great dividends. Skillful note-takers know that it is impossible to write down every word the speaker says—attempting to do so invariably results in falling behind and missing important ideas as you struggle to write the previous idea down. It is wise to develop a system of abbreviations for the most commonly used words in a particular subject area; the shorter the abbreviation the better, although you certainly want to make sure that it is not so cryptic that you fail to remember its meaning later. For example, in a Communication class, the word "communication" will obviously be used again and again. You could abbreviate this word as "comm.," but even that is unnecessarily long. A capital letter "C" should suffice. There are also common abbreviations for words such as "within" and "because," and there are mathematical symbols to represent such words or phrases as "greater than," "less than," "increase," "decrease," "therefore," and others. Develop your own system and constantly seek to perfect it. Some note-takers find that it is helpful to take notes as they read the text in preparation for class, and to use only half of the page for those notes, highlighting key terms. Then, while taking class notes, they locate the appropriate term in their reading notes and add additional notes in the space next to the term. There are many note-taking systems and strategies recommended by people who are experts in the development of study skills; check your local bookstore or online resources that might be useful to you. You should also investigate the resources available to you on your campus to help you improve in this vital academic skill.

APPLY WHAT YOU KNOW: INFORMATIONAL LISTENING SKILLS

Apply what you know about informational listening skills by answering these questions:

Which of the skills for informational listening (select at least two) do you think would have kept the misunderstanding between Waan and Julie in our opening scenario from happening? Explain your thinking.

Do you think these same skills would help the typical college student? Why or why not?

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Figure 3.6: Informational listening requires active participation on the part of the patient

ASK QUESTIONS AND PARAPHRASE

Perhaps the best way to improve your informational listening skills is to stay active and engaged throughout the class. Participation in a discussion requires you to listen to the contributions of others. Two skills that are particularly beneficial for informational listening are questioning and paraphrasing. Questioning is a type of cross-examination used to gain understanding or additional information. The types of questions that get you the most information—such as open-ended and

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follow-up questions—are discussed in the Appendix. Paraphrasing is used to clarify or confirm your understanding. A paraphrase is essentially a statement, sometimes phrased in the form of a question, which reflects to the sender the gist of what you heard her/him say. A good paraphrase is not a verbatim restatement of the speaker's words; it is a restatement in your own words. "What I understand you to be saying is …" is an example of a paraphrase. If your understanding is not accurate, the sender has a chance to clear up any misunderstanding, which, of course, means that you have a chance to achieve shared meaning. Whether you are asking questions, paraphrasing, volunteering an answer to a question that has been posed, or simply making a comment about something that is being discussed, active and engaged participation in class will help you to attend, understand, respond, and remember—the important components of effective listening identified earlier in this chapter.

Critical Listening

Every day we are subjected to persuasive messages. Whether these messages are conveyed by advertisements in the media, political candidates, or campus speakers trying to get us to adopt their beliefs, we are asked to listen in order to make decisions about actions we will take. Unlike situations requiring informational listening where our goal is to comprehend information, persuasive situations require critical listening. In critical listening situations, the speaker's goal is to persuade us; therefore, our goal must be to evaluate the credibility of the speaker and of the message. If we fail to make the shift from informational to critical listening, we are likely to blindly accept the information, making us an easy target for persuaders who may not have our best interests in mind.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

3.5 What is critical listening, in what listening situations is it needed most, and which specific skills are suggested for its effective use?

Skillful persuaders know that they must be credible and that their messages must be believable if they are to achieve their goal. Nearly 2,500 years ago, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle theorized about rhetoric in his book The Art of Rhetoric and included the elements necessary for a speaker to be persuasive. He posited that speakers must attend to ethos, logos, and pathos appeals. Skillful critical listeners must pay attention to how speakers use these elements to judge whether the message and the speaker are worthy of belief.

LISTENING CRITICALLY TO SPEAKER ETHOS

Ethos refers to speaker credibility. In order for a speaker to be viewed as a person worthy of belief, the listener must perceive the speaker to be someone who demonstrates three important characteristics: competence, character, and charisma.

Competence is the listener's perception that the speaker is knowledgeable about the subject.

Character is the listener's perception that the speaker is someone who can be trusted, who is fair and honest, and who is motivated by interest in the listener's needs rather than merely her/his own vested interests.

Charisma is the listener's perception that the speaker possesses traits that the listener admires or respects. Charisma is also related to the degree to which the listener perceives that there is enough common ground (similar values or experiences) between the speaker and the listener for the listener to identify with the speaker in some important respects.

A good critical listener will observe how speakers demonstrate credibility in their persuasive messages:

Speakers who are competent will make good use of evidence to back up their claims and show sound reasoning. Competent speakers are also more likely to present both sides of an issue—showing that they are aware of arguments opposing their view and explaining why those arguments are inaccurate or so minimal as to be unimportant.

Speakers who have good character will cite the sources of their evidence and will use sources that are not biased. Any persuader may have a personal stake in achieving their persuasive objectives, but a speaker of good character will also be concerned with the listener's needs. For example, salespeople are clearly motivated by the need to earn an income, which can only happen if they are able to sell a product. However, honest salespeople will not misrepresent the product and will take care to learn about the customer's needs in order to guide buyers to products that are most suitable for them.

Speakers who have charisma will use their "charm" to draw others to them by the force of their personality. They may also appeal to our emotions, as we will discuss in greater detail shortly. For now, however, it is important to recognize that a speaker's charisma often carries a lot of weight in our responses to persuasive messages. Good critical listeners will not allow charisma to be the most important factor in judging a speaker as credible.

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Figure 3.7: Critical listeners evaluate the evidence and the credibility of the sales person and their pitch

LISTENING CRITICALLY TO SPEAKER LOGOS

In addition to judging the credibility of the speaker, the critical listener will also judge the credibility of the message. When you listen for the evidence that supports any claim the speaker makes as well as the sound reasoning from that evidence, you are listening for the speaker's logos. In later chapters on public speaking, we will deal more specifically with forms of evidence. For now, it may be helpful to note that evidence refers to supporting material such as definitions, explanations, examples, illustrations, expert testimony, comparisons, and statistics. It is not enough, however, that speakers have evidence; they must also demonstrate sound reasoning from that evidence. In other words, having examined the data, speakers must draw conclusions from the evidence that are logically correct and do not exhibit fallacious reasoning.

Fallacies are flaws in reasoning. They occur when the conclusions drawn from evidence do not necessarily support the argument being made. Philosophy courses often include the study of formal and informal logic, including the systems that allow analysis of just how arguments break down. Some of the most common fallacies are presented in Table 3.1 to give you a sense of how speakers often draw conclusions that do not necessarily follow from the evidence. Although these fallacies are covered in detail in Chapter 14, we will take a brief look at three of them to demonstrate how important it is to listen critically to logos:

Ad hominem, or "against the person," is the type of reasoning that occurs when the speaker attacks a person instead of the person's argument. For example, when a speaker says that you should not believe an opponent because of some personal circumstance or trait that is irrelevant to the topic, the speaker is hoping to divert your attention from the merits of the opponent's argument. "You cannot believe Ms. Jones's statement that her proposal will save tax dollars; after all, she has been married three times!"

Ad verecundiam is an inappropriate appeal to authority in which speakers claim that their arguments are true because some esteemed person claims they are true, even though the issue at hand is out of that authority's area of expertise. When athletes endorse products that are not related to their sports, a potential ad verecundiam fallacy exists. A classic example of this fallacy is in the advertisements where a movie star proclaims, "I am not a doctor, but I play one on

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television."

Hasty generalization occurs when a conclusion is based on only isolated examples or too few examples. In other words, when the sample used by the speaker is too small to be representative of the population it comes from, hasty generalization is likely. For example, consider the following argument:

— Last year in our own city a student was caught carrying a handgun.

—A survey of one inner-city school found that 3 percent of students bring handguns to school.

— It is obvious that our state needs to install metal detection equipment in every school in the state.

Unless the above conclusion is supported with more inclusive research, it is certainly a hasty generalization.

UNIT I SCENARIO

Question #10

Since both Waan and Julie are students, which type of listening would be most appropriate for the classroom–informational, critical, or empathic? Why? Discuss three specific skills for effectively using this type of listening. Be prepared to share your results if asked.

Although we have presented only a few of the many fallacies that exist, you should have a better idea of the importance of listening critically to the claims, the evidence, and the reasoning that speakers use in the attempt to persuade you—all of which are part of the logos of the message.

LISTENING CRITICALLY TO SPEAKER PATHOS

Another important component of successful persuasion is the use of pathos, or appeals to emotion. Aristotle observed that, in order to move people to action, speakers must appeal to listeners’ emotions. We will look in detail at effective emotional appeals in our discussion of persuasive speaking later in Chapter 14. For now, be aware that emotional appeals must be used ethically.

Unfortunately, examples abound of persuaders who use emotional appeals as their primary "evidence." The goal appears to be to entice listeners to suspend their rational thought processes so that they will agree to do things that they would not do if they were really listening critically. We have all seen the advertisements that try to persuade us that popularity is virtually guaranteed if we only purchase the advertiser's product.

Table 3.1: Types of Fallacious Reasoning

Fallacy Definition

Ad hominem Attacking the person instead of the person's argument

Ad populum Claiming an idea is true because everyone knows that it is true

Ad verecundiam Claiming an idea is true because an esteemed person says it's true

Begging the question Claiming that an idea is true because it is–no evidence; just assumption

False dichotomy Using "either-or" reasoning without admitting any middle ground

Hasty generalization Supporting an argument with isolated or too few examples

Post hoc Claiming that event A caused event B because B followed A

Red herring Offering a fact to distract from the actual topic or argument

Slippery slope Taking a certain step automatically will lead to another undesirable step

Straw person Attacking a bogus argument rather than an actual argument

Some speakers fabricate similarities with their audience members, such as a speaker who attempts to win over his golfing audience by referring to himself as a "golf fanatic" though he has played golf only a few times. Others use emotionally loaded terms and exaggeration of "costs, problems, or negative consequences" (Herrick, 1995, p. 230) to play on their audiences’ emotions. For example, "We've received hundreds of calls in violent opposition to this new city ordinance" could be used to get city members emotionally stirred up. However, critical listening could uncover some exaggerations—for example, asking questions such as what was the exact number of phone calls? Is this number more or less than typically received by city hall? What does "violent opposition" mean?

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Even more disturbing is the speaker who goes beyond suggestion, loaded words, and exaggeration to total fabrication. Consider, for example, a televangelist who uses images of children from other countries in obvious poverty in order to increase contributions when in fact the ministry serves only local needs, or a salesperson who claims a product will cure a serious disfiguring acne condition, when it is no more than a normal antibiotic. As good critical listeners, we need to look through the emotional appeals and make sure that the speaker's arguments are, in fact, truthful and accurate before we adopt a belief and/or take an action such as parting with our financial resources. Unfortunately, many viewers are not effective critical listeners, and the stories about elderly people on fixed incomes who have given everything they have to unscrupulous persuaders shows the need for critical listening skills.

USING CRITICAL LISTENING SKILLS

So what skills are helpful for developing good critical listening? The most obvious include the following:

Researching speaker statements may be necessary before making decisions, particularly when the speaker is not readily accessible for interaction.

Evaluating the credibility of the speaker and of the message is an important step. When the speaker offers forms of proof as evidence, the listener should evaluate each piece of evidence for its credibility.

Probing personal observations given by the speaker as evidence is something the critical listener should do to determine if there are other factors that might account for its occurrence.

Questioning is another crucial listening skill. For example, a speaker may make an assertion of something that appears to be a fact but may be, instead, an inference. An inference is a conclusion that is drawn from something you observe and requires evidence to support its accuracy. Therefore, when a speaker makes a claim without offering evidence to back it up, the critical listener needs to question, "How do you know this?" Questions about the sources of statistics, the credentials of experts cited, and the details about examples that are offered are all part of the critical listener's toolkit.

Paraphrasing, as always, allows you to clarify and confirm your understanding of the speaker's message.

APPLY WHAT YOU KNOW: CRITICAL LISTENING AND FALLACIOUS REASONING

Apply what you know about critical listening to answer these questions:

"Bob's car was broken into while he was in class. This campus needs to double security patrols." This is an example of which fallacy: ad hominem, hasty generalization, ad verecundiam?

"Jamerson couldn't possibly make a good mayor–her first company ended in bankruptcy" is an example of the ad hominem fallacy–true or false?

Listen to several commercials on radio or television, or locate several ads in a newspaper or magazine. Identify at least one common fallacy from Table 3.1. Explain whether you think this fallacy was used deliberately or by mistake.

So far, we have covered two important listening situations: informational and critical. In the informational situation, the sender's goal is to convey information; the listener's goal is to comprehend it. In the critical situation, the sender's aim is to persuade; the listener's goal is to judge the credibility of the speaker and the message. One important listening situation remains—empathic listening.

Empathic Listening

The empathic listening situation is encountered when a sender's goal (usually a friend or colleague) is to get help to cope with or solve a problem, and your goal is to listen with empathy and see the world from the sender's frame of reference. It is important to note that in order to be empathetic, you do not necessarily need to agree with the sender's view of the problem. It is also not necessary that you have had a similar problem in your own life. Your goal is not to project yourself into the other person's situation; it is to keep yourself out of it and, at least for the moment, experience the world through your friend's perspective.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

3.6 What is empathic listening, in what listening situations is it needed most, and which specific skills are suggested for its

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effective use?

Empathy is not the same as sympathy. To feel sympathy for someone is to feel sorry for their predicament. When you are empathetic you do not feel for someone; you feel with them. This is not an easy thing to do, but it is an important aspect of developing and maintaining close relationships with other people. Sims (2017) found that the personality traits of agreeableness and openness lead to active-empathic listening, a style where the speaker recognizes that the listener is actively involved and the listener is able to "put themselves emotionally and conceptually in the speakers’ shoes" (p. 163).

The key to effective empathic listening lies in the responses you offer as you listen to your friend talk. Let us examine some of the possible responses that occur when listening empathically—supporting, interpreting, paraphrasing, questioning, judging, and advising.

USE SUPPORTING RESPONSES

In place of giving judging responses that discount the speaker's feelings, good empathic listeners offer supporting responses that show that they are concerned and willing to invest the time and energy required to listen. Statements such as, "I can imagine that this would be very painful to you," or "Is there anything I can do to help? I would be glad to listen," are responses that communicate to the sender that you are supportive of his or her right to feel a particular way. As mentioned earlier, using supporting responses does not necessarily mean that you are in agreement with a person's feelings—merely that you recognize those feelings. Supporting responses may also be nonverbal; a touch on the arm, eye contact that lets the speaker know that you are completely focused on him or her at that moment, head nods and the occasional "mm-hmm" that convey attentiveness are all ways that you can demonstrate support.

USE INTERPRETING RESPONSES

Supporting responses are very helpful for effective empathic listening; however, they are not enough. Interpreting responses offer the speaker another way to view some aspect of the situation. Sometimes as you listen to a friend, you will realize that she has possibly exaggerated the significance of an event or misinterpreted an action or a remark made by another person. People often go to others with a problem because they recognize that the other person is not emotionally embroiled in the situation and may be able to see things more objectively; sometimes we all need a "sounding board" to test out our perceptions. By providing interpreting responses, the listener can help the speaker reframe the situation or consider alternative interpretations. However, there are two important suggestions for offering good interpreting responses:

Word your response so it sounds like a possibility rather than a certainty. "Oh, you have just misunderstood," suggests that you have a more accurate view than your friend does. Most people would react defensively to such a statement, given that they are the ones who know the whole story. It is preferable to phrase your interpreting response as a suggestion: "That is so out of character for him; is it possible that something is happening in his life now that would account for that behavior?" The speaker then has the opportunity to consider this possible reframing of the situation or to explain why his or her own perspective is, in fact, accurate.

Make sure the timing of your response is correct. All too often a listener may jump in with an alternative interpretation very early in the empathic listening situation. A friend may confide that she is worried that her boyfriend is on the verge of ending their relationship because he hasn't made time to see her in a few days. You may immediately recognize that there are many possible explanations for that behavior, such as "Maybe he is just really busy right now." However, when you offer this alternative interpretation before you have heard any more information, your friend may wonder whether you are defending her boyfriend rather than understanding her concern. Therefore, a good rule of thumb is that you should not offer an alternative way to frame your friend's situation until you have a clear understanding of how she frames it. You should not offer the interpreting response until you have earned the right to be heard.

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Figure 3.8: What type of response does this parent seem to be using?

When the principles of timing and wording are observed, an interpreting response can be a very helpful way for you to demonstrate that you are attempting to fully understand the speaker's frame of reference.

USE QUESTIONING RESPONSES AND PARAPHRASING RESPONSES

You may be wondering at this point, "How do you earn the right to be heard?" The answer lies in those two very important listening skills that have already been discussed as essential to informational and critical listening: questioning and paraphrasing.

QUESTIONING RESPONSES Remember that your goal in empathic listening is to see the world through the other person's frame of reference. To do this, you must get enough information to fill in the picture you have of the situation. You do this by asking questions. The ability to ask good questions is crucial, but it is also not always easy. Good listeners pay close attention to what has been said as well as to what has not been said. The key to formulating good questions is to keep in mind that you are trying to fill in the missing pieces of the picture. As you listen to the speaker, you should constantly ask yourself, "What else do I need to know to fill in this picture?" Good questions build on answers; they probe for additional information that will help you to fully understand the speaker's perspective.

PARAPHRASING RESPONSES Paraphrasing, as we discussed earlier, is reflecting to the speaker what you heard him or her say. In fact, paraphrasing is often referred to as reflective listening. It is as if you are holding up a mirror so the speaker can understand how you heard what he said. Paraphrasing is important because it allows you to confirm the accuracy of your understanding or to correct your misunderstanding. It is also beneficial to the speaker because it allows him to see how his communication is being perceived. In addition, it provides evidence that you are, in fact, truly listening. There are two types of paraphrases that are used in empathic listening: content and feelings.

CONTENT PARAPHRASING The first type, referred to as a content paraphrase, occurs when you "say back" to the speaker the information that was contained in his or her statement. However, be sure to:

Put the paraphrase in your own words, not a verbatim repetition of the speaker's remarks.

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Include the whole message in your paraphrase. You should not fixate on one portion of the message and ignore other important parts of it. For example, assume that your friend says, "My boss told me that unless I start increasing my sales, I am going to lose my job, and then I won't have any way to pay my rent and car insurance." If you were to respond, "So it costs you a lot to pay rent and your car payment?" you would be missing an important aspect of the speaker's concern. A better paraphrase would be, "So you are getting a lot of pressure at work and you need to keep your job so you can meet your obligations; is that correct?"

FEELINGS PARAPHRASING The second type of paraphrase, the feelings paraphrase, is achieved by reflecting to the speaker the emotions that you detect underneath the content of the message. In the example above, you would be paraphrasing your friend's feelings if you said, "It sounds like you are pretty worried about your job right now." Good empathic listeners use both types of paraphrases and, in doing so, increase their ability to see the world through the speaker's frame of reference.

AVOID JUDGING AND ADVISING RESPONSES

Although judging and advising responses are often used in empathic listening situations, we suggest that you avoid them when at all possible. The judging response occurs when you try to make a person feel better with platitudes or by minimizing their concerns with comments such as, "Don't worry; everything will be OK," "You shouldn't feel that way," or "That's not a problem." Although these statements are intended to comfort the speaker, what really happens is that they set you up as the "judge" of what constitutes a problem and may even communicate that you don't think the person's problems are important. Most people do not appreciate being judged or having their concerns minimized, even when the intent is to be reassuring. Although there may be times when responses of this sort can help to defuse a particularly strong statement of distress, most of the time the judging response should be avoided.

The advising response occurs when you propose a solution to your friend's problem. You may reason that your friend did, after all, come to you for help with a problem; surely the best thing you can do is to fix his problem for him. To make this assumption would be a mistake. Consider for a moment the dangers of offering advice. Should your friend accept your advice, only to have it fail to accomplish his goals, you would then be held responsible for that failure. By the same token, if your friend takes your advice and it works, you may well find that you are consulted every time your friend faces a new problem that he feels incapable of solving. Few of us would enjoy having the responsibility for other people's lives in this manner.

There may be times when a person does need advice. For example, if your friend is on the verge of making a decision that could potentially result in an outcome that would be physically harmful, you may not have time to employ the empathic listening techniques discussed here. Generally, however, you would be wise to adopt this philosophy about giving advice: When people come to you asking for help with a problem, they do not need your right answers; what they need are the right questions, so they can find their own right answers.

LISTENING AND YOUR CAREER

The communication and listening skills covered in this chapter can be of special importance to you as you search for and develop a career. The Spotlight on, Career Moment, and Connecting to features relate communication skills from the chapter to success in the specific fields of business, education, and healthcare.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

3.7 What listening information and skills covered in this chapter relate specifically to your career?

Spotlight on the Value of Listening

Business

You may find yourself working for a global company and a member of a virtual team whose members communicate with each other through the Internet and never meet face-to-face at all. In situations like these, where cultural differences are likely, the technology involved makes listening both more important and more difficult. Some global listening tips include the following (Brownell, 2013; Reisner, 1993; Varner & Beamer, 1995):

Use humor, carefully-not all cultures find the same content humorous.

Cultivate diverse viewpoints-acknowledge the role of ambiguity in creating ideas.

Communicating for Success, 2nd Edition

For clarity of ideas, both high- and low-context cultures should present information in a low-content manner without taking meanings for granted.

Answer email carefully and quickly to show that you are attentive.

Education

Listening training begins in preschool with "zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket." Education-World.com in "Building Listening Skills with Asian Folktales" (2007) suggests teaching listening to children from Pre-K through 8th grade by using such Asian folktales as:

"Kings for Breakfast: A Hindu Legend"

"The Gifts of Wali Dad: A Tale of India and Pakistan"

"Too-too-moo and the Giant: A Tale of Indonesia"

At the same time, teachers could use maps to locate each country, show each country's flag, and have students act out the tales from each country. Empathic listening is especially important to use in the classroom. According to Judith Schubert (2007), when listening, educators should (1) give complete attention, (2) avoid being judgmental, (3) focus on feelings and not just facts, and (4) use restatements to clarify (p. 228).

Healthcare

To encourage an attitude of partnership with patients, healthcare professionals must focus more on listening to patients by using these listening skills (Kelner & Bourgeault, 1993):

To get more information in less time, use specific questions that limit responses to yes, no, or single words.

To encourage elaboration, use silence and open-ended questions such as "Tell me about your symptoms."

When answers are incomplete, use follow-up or probing questions.

To check understanding, use paraphrasing.

To show you are listening, use active listening techniques such as eye contact, head-nods, and verbal utterances such as "mm-hmm."

To ensure that patient concerns have been addressed, use clearinghouse questions ("Is there anything else that is troubling you?"). See the Appendix for more questions.

Career Moment: Listening and Your Career

Our Spotlight on the Value of Listening looked at the importance of listening in the fields of business, education, and healthcare. No matter what career you wish to pursue, listening and communication skills are essential (Brownell, 2013). Although 80 percent of executives in one study selected listening as the most important skill in the workplace, 28 percent of them also listed listening as the most lacking skill in the workplace (Salopek, 1999). Employers are looking for people with listening awareness and listening skills. This means that just by taking this course in Communication, you have improved your employability.

Now consider another possibility–what about a minor in Communication? A Communication minor fits with many major fields of study such as business, law, criminal justice, education, international relations, psychology, healthcare, and hotel management–just to name a few. Communication skills are also important in the science fields. For example, The 2015–2016 Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET, 2014) include "the ability to communicate effectively" as a Student Outcome and as a standard for evaluating college engineering programs in the United States. Regardless of your profession, the more communication training you receive, the better your skills in the workplace.

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Credit: Shutterstock.com/wavebreakmedia.

Figure 3.9

Connecting to … Business

Are you considering a business or professional career? Listening skills are extremely important in the business world because we spend more of our time listening–up to 80 percent in a day (Wolvin & Coakley, 1988). Up to 60 percent of worker errors are estimated to be the result of poor listening (Cooper, 1997). Another study found that, although executives ranked listening as the most important skill in the workplace, they also ranked listening as the skill most lacking (Salopek, 1999).

Credit: Shutterstock.com/ Monkey Business Images.

ACTIVITY

Go to Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab at www.esl-lab.com and take one of the tests in the General Listening Quizzes columns to test your listening skills–Business Communications under the Easy column is a good place to begin. After taking the quiz, write a short paragraph explaining: (1) The score you received on the quiz and what it shows about your listening, (2) Whether you agree with the quiz score based on your listening experiences in the workplace, and (3) What you learned about your listening habits from this chapter.

Connecting to … Education

Are you considering a career in education? Listening skills are part of what it means to be a successful teacher. But not all teachers use effective listening skills, do they? According to McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey (2006), teachers often reduce students’ willingness to communicate by their poor use of immediacy (verbal, vocal, and visual behaviors).

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Credit: Shutterstock.com/ AVAVA.

ACTIVITY

Complete the Teacher Immediacy Measure (Richmond & McCroskey, 1992) by indicating how well the following statements apply to your teacher's communication with you: 1 = Never; 2 = Rarely; 3 = Occasionally; 4 = Often; 5 = Very Often

____ 1. Uses hands and arms to gesture while talking

____ 2. Uses a monotone or dull voice while talking

____ 3. Looks at you while talking to you

____ 4. Frowns while talking

____ 5. Has a very tense body position while talking

____ 6. Moves away while talking to you

____ 7. Uses a variety of vocal expressions while talking

____ 8. Touches you on the shoulder or arm while talking

____ 9. Smiles while talking to you

____ 10. Looks away from you while talking to you

____ 11. Has a relaxed body position while talking

____ 12. Is "stiff" while talking

____ 13. Avoids touching you while talking to you

____ 14. Moves closer while talking to you

____ 15. Is animated while talking

____ 16. Looks bland or neutral when talking

Scoring:

(1) Total scores for items 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 16.

(2) Total scores for items 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15.

(3) Start with 48 points; add total from (1) and subtract total from (2).

(4) Scores above 74—high immediacy. Score below 32—low immediacy. Scores of 32–74—moderate immediacy.

Connecting to … Healthcare

Healthcare is a career area that is projected to be in great demand for the foreseeable future mainly due to the aging of our population. The listening skill of healthcare professionals is even more critical when the patient is a senior citizen. Patients of all ages are more satisfied when their doctors and nurses listen carefully and ask for input (Robert et al., 2015).

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ACTIVITY

Form a group of at least three students who are interested in careers as health professionals, and create a scenario that would involve a patient who is seeing a nurse for the first time.

After you have created your scenario, role play an interaction between the patient and the nurse that focuses on the listening skills of the nurse. Take turns playing the role of the nurse, working especially to use empathic listening skills or to illustrate the nurse doing a poor job of listening. Discuss the differences between the effective and ineffective scenarios.

This principle suggests that people are benefited more by the type of listening that allows them to solve their own problems. A good empathic listener, when asked, "What should I do?" will avoid giving advice.

A good empathic listener will, instead, use the questioning and paraphrasing responses to guide a friend in discovering alternatives that are available. The good empathic listener will use questions and paraphrases to assist a friend in evaluating the feasibility of the options identified as possibilities, until the friend has decided the option that he or she is most willing to invest in.

This approach takes the responsibility for others’ decisions away from the listener. It also empowers speakers to take charge of their own lives. For most people, to be truly listened to is a rare thing; it builds trust and confidence in the quality of the relationship. In that way, good empathic listening is a gift we offer to others.

APPLY WHAT YOU KNOW: EMPATHIC LISTENING

Remember the opening scenario with Waan and Julie? Assume that you are a friend of Julie's, and that she has just expressed her frustrations about her roommate to you and has asked you what she should do (or pick Waan, if you prefer). To apply what you know about empathic listening, complete the following:

Write a supporting response and an interpreting response that you might make.

Now write a judging response and an advising response that you might make.

Which one of these responses is more like the responses you usually make to your friends or family members?

What problems, if any, do you see with your usual responses? What strengths do you see? Give an example for each.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Becoming an effective listener is hard work, but it is worth the effort. You can determine your knowledge of listening by checking the skills and learning objectives presented in this chapter. For a detailed summary of the chapter's learning objectives, see Online Materials for Chapter 3. Summarize this chapter by checking each skill that you now feel qualified to perform:

I can incorporate several memory tips to improve my listening.

I can identify and avoid several major barriers to effective listening.

I can pinpoint poor listening habits that I have and make and follow a plan to overcome them.

I can recognize and use at least two listening skills needed in the informational, critical, and empathic contexts.

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The next chapter will look at the role that verbal skills play in the success or failure of our communication with others.

KEY TERMS (CHECK GLOSSARY FOR DEFINITIONS)

ad hominem

ad verecundiam

advising responses

combative listening

content paraphrase

critical listening

defensive listeners

empathic listening

ethos

external noise

fallacies

feelings paraphrase

focused listening

hasty generalization

high-context cultures

imitation listening

inference

information overload

informational listening

insulated listening

internal noise

interpreting responses

judging responses

listening

logos

long-term memory

low-context cultures

paraphrasing

pathos

questioning

receiver apprehension

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reflective listening

selective listening

semantic noise

short-term memory

stages of listening

supporting responses

SKILL BUILDERS

1. Unit I Scenario Activity: To demonstrate your knowledge of Chapter Three, complete the following:

a. In groups of three to seven, answer the Chapter 3 questions that relate to the Unit I Scenario about Julie and Waan (questions 7, 8, 9, and 10). Be prepared to share your answers with other groups.

b. End by completing the following: Rewrite the opening scenario with Waan and Julie making their conversation show effective listening and communication. Be prepared to read your new scenario to the class.

2. Critically Evaluating What You Read Activity: An article in Fast Company describes listening as an important skill when hiring a new employee. Using the critical evaluation form from Chapter 1, read and critique "Why Listening Might be the Most Important Skill to Hire For" (www.fastcompany.com/3042688/why-listening-might-be-the- mostimportant-skill-to- hire-for). Be prepared to share your observations with your classmates.

3. Critically Evaluating What You Hear Activity: Use the critical listening suggestions for speaker ethos, logos, and pathos covered in this chapter as you listen to one of the "12 of the Best Commencement Speeches of 2016" (http://billmoyers.com/story/12-best-commencement-speeches- 2016/). Options include Michele Obama, Hank Azaria, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Sonya Sotomayor, John Lewis, Spike Lee, Lin Manuel Miranda, Sheryl Sandberg, Barack Obama, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Jane Goodall. Also, if your college subscribes to the eLibrary database, find a transcript of a radio or television program by a controversial talk-show host to critique. In these speeches, be sure not to let your personal political leanings get in the way of an objective critique. Be prepared to turn in your written critique if requested.

4. Listening and Gender Activity: As you think about gender and listening, consider some of the main differences between the way men and women listen discussed in the text. How you think these differences might affect the way messages are encoded by men and women? For the following scenarios, encode the message the way you think would be typical for a man, and then contrast that with the way you think would be typical for a woman.

Two people (a dating couple) are at a party. One of them wants to leave and go somewhere else.

A male business owner is approached by a female sales representative from a company that wishes to supply goods or services to the business owner. The business owner is not interested in the sales representative's product.

A male patient wants to tell a female healthcare provider that prescribed treatments are not working and may be creating new health problems. How do you think this may relate to the concepts of high/low context? What conclusions would you draw?

Communicating for Success, 2nd Edition

Chapter 3: Listening
Overview
Introduction
What is Listening?
Importance of Listening
Barriers to Listening
Informational Listening
Critical Listening
Empathic Listening