Good afternoon, we are going to take a few minutes and discuss the five elements of the listening process, some barriers to listening and a few tools to that I use to improve my listening process. Listening is not as easy as we think. Ask yourself how well do we listen? Let’s visit the each of the five elements so we have a better understanding of what listening really is.
The first element is hearing most people think that listening is hearing when in fact hearing is just the physiological reaction that the body makes when there are auditable sounds.
When these sounds, made up of different frequencies and loudness resonate over the ear drum the brain processes them into comprehendible information. These sounds tell us several things about our environment, emotions and messages. While we hear words which constitutes communication the other 4 elements are needed to effectively listen and thus communicate.
Attending is the psychological aspect of the listening process. This is the attention we give to what we are hearing and serves as the process to filter out certain sounds to prevent overload in our brain. When overload happens we become confused, frustrated and agitated.
Overload is a significant barrier to communication and affects the listening process. There are a couple factors to consider that happen automatically and we aren’t even aware we do are doing it. Our subconscious selectively diverts attention to things that are more interesting or enjoyable.
One example would be trying to do home work and watching TV at the same time. While some say they can effectively do both its near impossible to focus equally on both tasks and thus both activities suffer. Selectivity is also a deliberate process and is the reason that we oft...
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...that affect listening are gender, prejudice, culture, noise, and fear again just to name a few. The basic tool for reducing or limiting these barriers is simply to identify the barrier and then consciously try to not do it. I know it’s easier said than done but just pick one of the barriers I mentioned that fits into your listening habits then try to avert it. For me it is rapid thought, my mind tends to run 100 miles per hour when in a discussion or meeting or lecture. I have to make a deliberate attempt to slow down my racing thoughts and concentrate on the messages being sent. Some times when I do that I find that the reason my brain is in rapid action is because I am not interested in the topic of discussion. Another tool for improving your listening is to change your environment that eliminate noises and creates an atmosphere that promotes effective listening.
Hearing allows us to take in noises from the surrounding environment and gives us a sense of where things are in relation to us. All those little folds on the outside of the ear, called the tonotopic organization, make it so sound waves in the air are directed to the ear canal, where they can be further processed. Once in the ear, the sound waves vibrate the ear drum, which tell the ear exactly what frequency it is sensing. The vibration of the ear drum is not quite enough to send a signal to the brain, so it needs to be amplified, which is where the three tiny bones in the ear come into play. The malleus or hammer, incus or anvil, and stapes or stirrup amplify this sound and send it to the cochlea. The cochlea conducts the sound signal through a fluid with a higher inertia than air, so this is why the signal from the ear drum needs to be amplified. It is much harder to move the fluid than it is to move the air. The cochlea basically takes these physical vibrations and turns them into electrical impulses that can be sent to the brain. This is...
This may happen unconsciously, as is usually the case with soft background noise such as the whoosh of air through heating ducts or the distant murmur of an electric clothes dryer. Sometimes hearing is done semi-consciously; for instance, the roar of a piece of construction equipment might momentarily draw one's attention. Conscious hearing, or listening, involves a nearly full degree of mental concentration. A familiar instance in which listening takes place would be a casual conversation with a friend or colleague. In such cases, the sound waves entering the ear are transferred to the brain, which then
The Importance of Listening for Professional and Personal Relationships Listening is essential for communication, yet is a skill in which most are lacking. Though we are listening constantly, knowing what to listen to requires an enormous amount of discipline and practice, which is vital for communicating effectively. Learning to listen will benefit all relationships from professional to personal and not being able to listen effectively can cause these relationships to deteriorate. “Indeed, although aware of the instrumentality of listening, even trained communicators often fail to listen correctly or at opportune times” (Cline, 2013). In order for all of areas of communication in an individual to flourish, listening must be emphasized.
We hear sound because circulating conflicts cause the eardrum to vibrate, and feelings are transferred to the acoustic nerve through the fluid and bones of the ear. For example loudness is a relative term. One sound decreases source. As the sound is propagated outward, it is “spread” over a greater area. The minimum sound intensity that can be detected by the human ear...
Today we live in a society where everything is seconds away from us. With the advances and affordability of quality technology, you would be hard pressed to find someone without a smartphone, laptop, or tablet, possibly all at the same time. Because of the accessibility we find that, in our tech-savvy culture, multitasking has not just become an art form of sorts, but rather an expectation. In the article “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend sets out to explore the idea that although multitasking appears to show productivity, it could be doing the opposite. Throughout her article, Tugend uses studies done by neurologists and psychologists to show how in a world that sees multitasking as an expectation it has actually made us less efficient. She proposes, through studies, that although you might be working on multiple tasks it is as if you’re playing tennis with multiple balls (Tugend, 725).
A vital aspect of interpersonal communication is the style in which one listens. While every individual possesses their own preferred method of listening in communication, it can be enlightening to analyze our own strengths and weaknesses so as to maximize effectual communication. Within the confines of four main listening style categories, I have chosen those which best describe my own personal listening style.
In conclusion, I think we need to master different listening styles to be used in different situation in order to contribute to effective communication strategies and planning.
Today, multitasking is everywhere, and is very huge in many situations. We are guilty of, multitasking and how it has become a negative and positive impact on our lives. Nowadays, people prefer to divide people in two groups; people who masters can multitask, and those who cannot. Almost everyone place themselves in the former group, thereafter they put the rest of the people in the latter. I personally find myself multitassking many things at once, and never pay attention to it. I believe that doing more than one thing is okay. In order to get things done faster multitasking seems like the answer to the question. In Tugend’s essay, she uses certain techniques that caught the reader’s attention, stating this as “you are reading this article, are you listening to music or the radio, Yelling at your children? Checking emails”? Of course, the reader was expected to read the essay. By persuading them to believe that, what she was saying was true.
Most people believe that they can successfully multitask. Everyday someone around the world is currently trying to do work while watching their favorite television program, writing a paper and checking up on their friend’s status updates online, or simply having a phone conversation with a loved one while reading the news. Completing these actions together are thought to be time saving yet some recent studies have indicated that when people multitask and divide their attention to completing two or more tasks at the same time they are actually being less productive. Rather than performing one single action as a time, multitasking some actions are actually taking up more time than needed. Although it is probably true that doing more than one
There is a big difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physical ability that the ears receive feelings and transmit them to the brain while listening is a skill. Listening skills allow one to make sense of what another person is saying. In other words, listening skills let you to understand what someone is "talking about”. It requires concentration so that your brain processes meaning from words and sentences.
As a professional in today’s society, it is greatly important to be able to communicate effectively with other professionals, with clients, and with those that are encountered in daily living. In order to communicate in a proper manner, not only is talking and non-verbal communication, but a large aspect is the ability to listen. Listening is a vital task in order to build a relationship and find meaning in someone else’s words. In order to find this meaning one must follow the characteristics of active listening, face the challenges to listening, and reflect upon one’s own listening skills.
Another strength of mine as a listener is the ability to ask questions and to keep myself engaged in the conversation. For me, asking questions are important because they clarify information if I do not understand and allow for asking for more information. On the other hand, it is important to not ask too many questions because then I am taking over the conversation and not listening. As a financial advisor, I have daily potential client meetings where listening is critical and allows me to take away key information. During these conferences, I ask the prospective customers questions and based off of their answers, I evaluate a possible financial outcome for their present and future. If I do not listen and pay strict attention to each client’s detailed an...
“Lack of listening skills affects marriages, parents and children, teachers and students, employers and employees, foreign affairs, and the list goes on” ("The Importance of Listening"). This paper will discuss how poor listening skills adversely affect interpersonal relationships. Variable listening skills will be examined through different characteristics, real-life scenarios and the improvements that could be made with tips.
Hearing is known to be an automatic function of the body. According to the dictionary, hearing is, “the faculty or sense by which sound is perceived; the act of perceiving sound,” (“hearing…”). Hearing is a physical and involuntary act; therefore, unless one is born with a specific form of deafness, everyone has the natural ability to hear sounds. Sounds constantly surround us in our everyday environments, and because we are so accustomed to hearing certain sounds we sometimes don’t acknowledge them at all (or “listen” to them). The dictionary definition of listening is, “to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing,” (“listening…”). This differs from hearing in that this is a voluntary action, and we have control over what we choose to listen to. As stated by William Seiler and Melissa Beall, “You don’t have to work at hearing; it just happens… Listening, on the other hand, is active and requires energy and desire,” (145).
To be effective listeners, the listening process should be incorporated into our lives. We should be attentive to what people say, clarify what the speaker is trying to come across, and respond in a way the speaker can understand what we are saying. I think I was aware that I needed some improvement in certain areas of this process but I feel as everything is slowly changing. In the future, I’m going try not to interrupt people, get distracted, tune out, and try to get a bigger picture of what the person is telling me. If good listening habits are applied in our day-to-day life, we can easily communicate with anyone and everyone.