Chapter 6- Listening and Responding to others

Listening and Responding How do we Listen? When we listen, we are hearing everything around us, either through sound waves or sight. Hearing is just a part of listening; to truly listen you need to receive, understand and respond. To accomplish this, one needs to be Mindful.

Mindfulness When we fully listen, we are being mindful, taking into account everything the speaker is saying and ignoring everything irrelevant. This is difficult for many people, as we can comprehend up to 300 words per minute, with most speakers only talking at a rate of 100 words per minute. This leads to our minds wandering during a conversation and possibly missing key elements. While being mindful, we are able to not only have a more in-depth understanding of the speaker’s emotions and thoughts, it encourages the speaker to continue communicating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfjhHuQoQuc

Physically Listening When physically listening, we understand communication through sight, such as seeing nonverbal communication, lip-reading or sign language. This is mostly used for those who are hearing impaired and rely on physical communication like sign language and lip-reading. When stressed, tired or otherwise mentally fatigued, our ability to physically listen and communicate is diminished. This also happens when multiple conversations or distractions are happening in our field of vision and/or sound.

Selecting, Organizing and Interpreting Communication Naturally, we don’t absorb all information around us at one time; we cycle through and pick what most interests us. Once again mindfulness comes into play. To organize our thoughts we use Cognitive Schemata, meaning we use our personal constructs and scripts and so forth to determine what we find important. Interpretation is the fourth aspect of listening. When we interpret, we put together all the information we have gathered thus far and develop an opinion. To make it effective, try to understand other’s viewpoints. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpP7b2lUxVE

Responding and Remembering Responding is crucial to listening, as it shows the speaker you have interest and possibly an opinion of the topic. One can respond through various physical methods as well, either by nodding a head, sitting up straight, or more negatively frowning and looking away. Remembering is thought of as the final aspect of communication, as it determines how much one was truly listening and interpreting the conversation.

Effective Listening Critical listening -Judging the information we receive -Make sure the information is credible Ex: A class lecture helps you listen to information critically. Engaging in the presentation helps with effective listening.

Steps to listening Critically Be mindful -Don’t allow your mind to wander when trying to listen and think critically about a subject. Control Obstacles -Block out any distractions that stop you from listening. Ask questions -engage with the communicator to try to get a better understanding. You may have listened but was unable to comprehend. Use memory aids to recall -Relating situations to terms you’ve heard so that you are able to recall them later. Organize Information -organize information so that you are able to retain that information.

Relationship Listening -engaging in relationship listening with anyone -feelings and relationships between people

Requirements for relationship listening Be mindful -Listening to give support to the person that may not be communicated through words. Suspend judgment -It’s best to just listen and respond without judging because the person may feel that they can’t be open with you. Understand the other’s Perspective -Putting aside our feelings to understand where someone else is coming from. Express support -Supporting someone even though you may not agree with everything they’re saying

Understanding the other’s perspective Minimal encouragers - responses that encourage others to continue and lets them know that you are listening. Ex: “Really?” , “I see” “Go on” Paraphrasing -reflecting our interpretation of what someone says back to them Ex: “ With all the news on teenagers and drugs, I wonder if my brother does drugs.” Paraphrase to understand: “It sounds as if you suspect your brother is doing drugs.”

Obstacles to Effective listening Situational -Are in communication context Internal -Are within communicators

Situational Obstacles Incomprehensibility -message is not clearly understood Message overload -message may have to much to process Message complexity -message is to complex

Environmental Distractions Television Music People talking Phones http://youtu.be/e_54-lwVcdI?t=1m16s http://youtu.be/5p06UYUe4Tc

Internal Obstacles Preoccupation -too absorbed in your own thoughts to focus on what someone else is saying Prejudgment -judging others ideas before we’ve heard them

Ineffective Listening Pseudolistening - Pretending to listen Monopolizing -Keeping focus on your self instead of the person talking Ambushing -Gather info only to use it to attack the speaker

Selective & Defensive Listening Selective Listening - focusing on particular parts of communication Defensive Listening -when someone perceives something as a personal attack when it is not intended to be.

REVIEW QuestionS 1. What are one of the requirements for relationship listening? 2. Focusing on a particular part of communication is considered ___________ listening. 3. To truly listen you need to receive, understand and _________.

PLEASE NOTE: Chapter summarized from information found in: Wood, Julia T. (2014). Communication Mosaics: An Introduction to the Field of Communication. 7th Edition. Boston, MA: Wadsworth. These student lecture notes provide a brief summary of Wood’s discussion on verbal communication (chapter 4) while providing additional commentary and examples. The information in this slideshow is based on the work (content and organization) of Wood (2014).