Interpersonal Communication: The Importance Of Listening Competence

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Listening Competence Brian Tracy once said, “Communication is a skill that you can learn. It 's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you 're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.” Communication is defined as the process of acting on information. Communicating is a very essential component of everyday life. According to the text book, the average person spends between eighty and ninety percent of their “waking time” communicating (Beebe 2). Communication improves our relationships as well as our overall health. Without communication, the human species would end because it is such a necessity. There are a variety of forms of communication including interpersonal, mass, public, small group and intrapersonal …show more content…

Many people interact verbally as well as nonverbally. However, two major roles are present when verbally communicating. In order to effectively communicate, one must know how to speak adequately as well as listen efficiently. Listening is the main focus since according to the textbook, the average person spends more time listening than anything else. Listening is described as the “process of selecting, attending to, creating meaning from, remembering, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages.” Though listening is such an effective part of communicating, it a skill that can greatly be improved in my …show more content…

The textbook defines hearing as “physiological process of decoding sounds.” With that being said, when I do listen, I am a “task oriented listener”. While listening to others, task oriented listeners focus on achieving a task. They like to get straight to the point so they can fix the task at hand. This listening is not good for all conversation because not all conversations focus on an outcome. Sometimes we “task oriented listeners” can be so focused on the outcome that we might miss the emotional context of a conversation. However, this listening style comes in handy while at work, school, of someplace that requires a

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