Hearing refers to perception of sound with the ear –

A Physical Act
Hearing is required but not sufficient for listening.
Listening is a lot more than Hearing.
Listening is a process that calls for concentration –
It involves hearing with attention.
Listening involves sensing, filtering and
remembering.
Good listening requires a knowledge of technique
and practice similar to good writing or good
speaking skills
A recent survey conducted in a top blue chip company in
India analysing how members spent their time
communicating….

63% of their time was spent in listening to one another,

reading took 4%, writing 11% and speaking 22% of their
time.

Listening is the communication skill that is used most

often in human interactions, but it also not a skill that
most people perform well.
If people are bad listeners, they will also make bad
communicators.
Listening can be defined as the art of hearing and
understanding what someone is saying. Each letter
of the word listen guides us towards becoming a
better listener
Look
Identify
Set-up
Tune-in
Examine
Note
Various stages of Listening
The Sensing/Selecting stage
The Interpreting stage
The Evaluating stage
The Responding stage
The Memory stage
 Breaks up the barriers between people
 Helps understanding each other more
 Prevents miscommunication of objectives and
priorities
 Saves time lost because of having to
communicate again and again.
 Obtain information
 Solve problems
 Share experiences
 Persuade or dissuade
 Listening helps know the organisation
 Listening helps in making better policies
 Listening pacifies complaining employees
 Listening is important for the success of the open-
door policy
 Listening helps to spot sensitive areas before they
become explosive
 Listening forms a bond of respect
 Listening increases productivity
 Listening can calm people down
 Listening increases confidence
 Listening increases accuracy
 Innovative solutions to problems evolve through
listening
 Cultivating the work environment
 Encourage prototyping
 Listening training is unavailable
 Thought speed is more than speaking speed,
hence mind is left to wander unless real effort is
put to listen carefully.
 We are inefficient listeners
 Listening but not hearing
 Rehearsing
 Interrupting
 Hearing what is expected
 Feeling defensive
 Listening for a point of disagreement
 Call the subject matter uninteresting
 Criticize the delivery or appearance of the speaker
 Become too stimulated
 Listen only for facts
 Try to outline everything that is being said
 Fake attention
 Tolerate or create distractions
 Evade the difficult
 Mental verbal criticism
 Faking attention
 Tolerating or creating distractions
 Interrupting or finishing their sentences
 I do not have to concentrate; Listening comes
naturally
 I am a good listener because I always get the
facts and figures straight
 You should not interrupt when someone else is
speaking
 A good listener paraphrases everything a speaker
says
 Informative Listening
 Refers to situation where primary concern is to
understand the message
 Three key variables related to Informative listening
 Vocabulary
 Concentration
 Memory
 Attentive Listening
 People listen attentively with the goal to understand
and remember what they are hearing.
 Three listening skill clusters used by attentive
listeners
 Attention skills
 A posture of involvement
 Appropriate body motion
 Eye contact
 Non-distractive environment
 Attentive Listening
 Following skills
 Door openers
 Minimal encouragers
 Infrequent questions
 Attentive silence
 Reflecting skills
 Paraphrasing
 Reflecting feelings
 Reflecting meanings
 Summative reflections
 Relationship Listening
 Purpose of relationship listening is either to help an
individual or to improve the relationship between
people
 Attending
 Supporting
 Empathizing
 Appreciative listening
 Appreciative listening includes listening to music,
speakers because you like their style, to your choices
in theatre, film , radio or television
 Quality of appreciative listening depends on three
factors
 Presentation
 Perception
 Previous experience
 Critical listening
 Effective critical listening depends on the listener,
the following three elements of message in the
analysis and in perspective.
 Ethos or source credibility
 Logos or Logical argument
 Pathos or psychological appeal
 Discriminative listening
 Most important type for it is basic to the other four
 By being sensitive to changes in the speaker’s rate,
volume, force, pitch and emphasis, the informative
listener can detect even the slightest shift in
nuances.
 Three things to consider about this type of listening
 Hearing ability
 Awareness of sound structure
 Integration of non-verbal cues
 Does not finish others sentences
 Does not have answer questions with questions
 Is aware of and guards against biases
 Never day dreams or becomes preoccupied by own thoughts
during the talk
 Does not dominate the conversation
 Plans responses after the other person has finished speaking
 Provides feedback, but does not interrupt incessantly
 Analyses by looking at all the relevant factors and asking open-
ended questions
 Keeps the conversation on what the speaker says, and not what
interests him/her
 Takes brief notes, as this forces one to concentrate on what is
being said
 The Faker
 The dependant Listener
 The Interrupter
 The self-conscious Listener
 The Intellectual Listener
 The judge and Jury Listener
 Decide on what your goals are for the
conversation
 To exchange information
 To build working relationship
 To feel good
 To make someone else feel good
 Be aware of your options
 With the conversation goal in mind choose whether
to talk, to listen ,to focus, to clarify what you want
to say or to listen attentively
 When to speak and when to listen
 Never assume you should talk more
 You can ask
 Make an effort to share the floor
 When conversation lags, refocus
 Planning what to say when you speak – Focusing and
Clarifying
 Before you speak you may choose to focus on what you are
going to say, by using appropriate structure and an
appropriate level of detail.
 For people who tend to ramble, practice getting whatever
you want to say in a fixed time using a clock/watch
 Attentive Listening
 Attentive listening means thinking and acting in ways
that connect you with the speaker
 Steps to improve attentive listening skills
 Get over yourself
 Stop Multi-tasking
 Recap regularly
 Use body language
 Gaining knowledge
 Receiving better work and cooperation from
others
 Winning friends
 Solving problems and conflicts
 Reducing tension
 Preventing trouble
 Doing a better job
 There are number of common barriers that we
need to be aware of to counteract.
 Content – Listener knowing too much/too little
 Speaker – Speaker’s delivery or listener’s
attitude towards speaker
 Medium – Distance and circumstances
 Distractions – Extraneous stimuli
 Mindset – Attitudes structured by listener’s
unique physical, mental and emotional
characteristics
 Language – Ambiguity / Misinterpretation
 Listening speed – speaking rate & thinking time
 Feedback – Inappropriate comments or
evaluations before a full evaluation of speaker’s
viewpoint
 Physical conditions
 Casual attitude
 Premature evaluation
 Status and role
 Communication context
 Passive Listening
 Occurs when the listener does not verbally respond to
the speaker
 Listener may deliberately or unintentionally send
non-verbal messages through eye-contact, smiles,
yawns or nods.
 Sometimes passive listening is appropriate e.g when a
speaker vents frustration or express an opinion, you
may want to listen passively.
 Active Listening
 Involves verbal feedback
 Listener may ask for additional information or
elaboration of any point to clarify speaker’s message
 Another type of feedback is paraphrasing (rephrasing
the speaker’s ideas in your own words) to
demonstrate that speaker’s message is understood.