Problems with Interpersonal Communication

“What, what did you say?” I often find myself saying this when talking with children. The likely culprit of why is poor listening habits. “Most people spend mere time listening than they spend on any other communication activity, yet a large percentage of people never learn to listen well.” (TLSC, 2008) The above example is what I like to call “pseudo listening.” People will be thinking about something else but appear to be listening and only get about half the intended message. Recently at my father’s (Ron) company because of a pseudo listening instance a $400,000 dollar piece of equipment did not get specked correctly. When it was delivered to the customer at Company B the blast doors did not fit properly on the dryer unit. As one can only imagine, this created a great deal of chaos and grief for both Ron and Company B, because of poor listening habits. Communication is a two way street however, it does seem that the burden lies with the receiver of the message. As the receiver you have to decode the message, in other words, assign meaning to what the source is saying. (Pearson,Nelson,Titsworth,Harter, 2003) If you exhibit poor listening skills one is not going to get a clear meaning of the sources verbal communications.

Negative Factors

Some of the factors that caused a break down at my father’s company were, for starters Ron and the owner of Company B never spoke to each other before the product was delivered. All communications were handled between a middle Company (for the purpose of this story I will call middle man, Mr. X.) Secondly, incorrect specs were given to Ron by Mr. X, because Mr. X didn’t get clarification when he received information from Company B. Lastly, Mr. X decided to quit his job in the...

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...on the speaker, and jot down points that are important and useful. Above all else ask questions to help get supporting evidence to back the sources message. By doing these you can greatly relieve issues that come from poorly listening.

Truly good information but in the real world people are always going to be “pseudo listeners” because as a nation of multi-taskers. That’s just the way it goes now a days. The real problem occurs when I am talking to the children and they don’t listen, well that’s another story in itself……..!

References

Pearson, Nelson, Titsworth and Harter. (2003). Human communication.

Retrieved January 11, 2015 from University of Phoenix, Week One, rEsource.com. 102 Web site.

Oregon State University, (2008) Retrieved January 11, 2015 from http://oregonstate.edu/listening

TLSC. (2008) Retrieved January 11, 2015 from www.tlsc.org