Interpersonal Communication: Listening Skills

Interpersonal Communication: Listening and Understanding

• Leadership involves taking the lead in confronting problems and entering conflict zones.
• Listening is crucial for forming and maintaining relationships, regardless of the relationship type (professional, personal, etc.)
• William Ury, a seasoned negotiator, advocates for listening processes over peace talks.
• O'Rourke (2007) highlights listening as the core skill for building and maintaining interpersonal relationships.
• Hearing is a physiological process of receiving sound waves, while listening is a selective process of attending, understanding, and remembering aural symbols.
• Active listening is a crucial interpersonal and interactive process, emphasizing focus, interpretation, and verbal/nonverbal responses to messages .
• It's important to distinguish between passive and active listening, which involve different levels, degrees, and purposes of focus and attention.

Levels of Listening

• Seven levels of listening are: Not listening, Pretend listening, Partly listening, Focused listening, Interpretive listening, Interactive listening, and Engaged listening.

Listening to Understand

• Effective listening is essential for appropriate responses.
• A speaker's receptiveness to others' thoughts and ideas is increased through listening.

Types of Listening

• Pleasurable listening is for enjoyment.
• Discriminative listening is for understanding and remembering (e.g., instructions, learning).
• Critical listening involves evaluating information, especially if it comes from potential biased sources.
• Empathetic listening involves understanding the other's emotions.

Listening: Importance

• Listening is crucial for gaining business, learning, and understanding customer and employee needs.
• It plays crucial roles in decision-making, building trust, and resolving conflicts.

Becoming a Better Listener

• Julian Treasure suggests immersing yourself in silence to filter out sound stimuli.
• Actively focusing on unexpected sounds like washing machines or cars can improve attention span.
• Treasure’s acronym RASA (Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask) offers a practical framework for active listening.

Improving Listening Skills

• Pay attention and concentrate; good listeners actively listen.
• Keefe(1976) found that supervisors often overestimate how well they listen compared to subordinates' perspectives.
• Possible issues with listening include hearing problems, information overload, fast thoughts, and distractions/noise.
• Ashenbrenner and Snalling (1988) identified additional listening barriers such as judgment, preoccupation, pseudolistening, semantics, excessive talking, and fear.

Active Listening Skills

• Practicing paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, meaning, and conclusions, and following through are valuable active listening skills.

Asking Effective Questions

• Avoid the use of closed questions, which limit discussion and may shut down conversation.
• Open-ended questions promote thinking and help reveal feelings, values, and ideas.

Follow-Through

• Consistently taking action based on employee inputs demonstrates engagement from managers.
• Effective follow-through is vital for maintaining positive employee relationships.

Listening Liabilities

• Poor listening habits can create significant professional liabilities in business.
• Specific liabilities can include external noise (e.g., ringing phones), internal noise (e.g., preconceived ideas), message noise (e.g., uninteresting topics), and channel deficiencies (e.g., non-verbal cues missing when communicating across platforms).

Profile of Management Communication Skills

• Data from Angell(2004) indicates that listening is the most utilized management communication skill (approximately 45%), compared to speaking (30%), reading (16%), and writing (9%).

Summary

• Questioning, listening, and feedback skills are essential for effective communication, comparable in importance to presentation and writing skills.

This quiz explores the critical role of listening in interpersonal communication. From active versus passive listening to the insights of experts like William Ury and O'Rourke, you will learn how effective listening can enhance relationships in various contexts. Test your understanding of listening processes and their importance in leadership and conflict resolution.