Listening is Important

Listening Listening Is Important Listening and Critical Thinking Four Causes of Poor Listening How to Become a Better Listener R ose Finnegan burst through the front door of her condo ready to share the good news: She had just been promoted to operations manager at the FedEx distribution center where she works. Bubbling with excite-ment, she found her husband on the couch staring into his laptop. "Guess what?" she asked. "What?" he replied, his eyes never leaving the computer screen. "I got the promotion at work!" "That's great," he murmured. "Let's go out to dinner to celebrate," she said, heading into the bedroom to change clothes. Fifteen minutes later, Rose emerged from the bedroom and saw her hus-band in the same position on the couch, his eyes still glued to the screen. Finally looking up, he noticed his wife's clothes. "You look nice!" he exclaimed. "Where are you going?" hearing The vibration of sound waves on the eardrums and the firing of electrochemical impulses in the brain. This story illustrates what one research study after another has revealed-most people are shockingly poor listeners. We fake paying attention. We can look right at some-one, appear interested in what that person says, even nod our head or smile at the appropriate moments-all without really listening.. Not listening doesn't mean we don't hear. Hearing is a physiological process, involving the vibration of sound waves on our eardrums and the firing of electro-chemical impulses from the inner ear to the central auditory system of the brain. But listening involves paying close attention to, and making sense of, what we hear. Even when we think we are listening carefully, we usually grasp only 50 percent of what we hear. After 24 hours we can remember only 10 percent of the original message. It's little wonder that listening has been called a lost art. Listening Is Important Although most people listen poorly, there are exceptions. Top-flight business execu-tives, successful politicians, brilliant teachers-nearly all are excellent listeners. So much of what they do depends on absorbing information that is given verbally-and absorbing it quickly and accurately. If you had an interview with the president of a major corporation, you might be shocked (and flattered) to see how closely that person listened to your words. listening Paying close attention to, and making sense of, what we hear. In our communication-oriented age, listening is more important than ever. According to one study, more than 60 percent of errors made in business come from poor listening. In another study, conducted by the management consulting firm Accenture, 64 percent of respondents stated that listening has become more difficult because of the digital distractions of today's workplace-phones, computers. messages, notifications, and so on. Replacing poor listening with good listening improves efficiency, sales, customer satisfaction, and employee morale. This is why, in most companies, effective listeners hold higher positions and are promoted more often than ineffective listeners. When business managers are asked to rank-order the communication skills most crucial to their jobs, they usually rank listening number one." Even if you don't plan to be a corporate executive, the art of listening can be helpful in almost every part of your life. This is not surprising when you realize that people spend more time listening than in any other communicative activity-more than reading, more than writing, more even than speaking. Think for a moment about your own life as a college student. Most class time in U.S. colleges and universities is spent listening to discussions and lectures. A num-ber of studies have shown a strong correlation between listening and academic suc-cess. Students with the highest grades are usually those with the strongest listening skills. The reverse is also true-students with the lowest grades are usually those with the weakest listening skills." There is plenty of reason, then, to take listening seriously. Employers and employees, parents and children, wives and husbands, doctors and patients, students and teachers-all depend on the apparently simple skill of listening. Regardless of your profession or walk of life, you never escape the need for a well-trained ear. Listening is also important to you as a speaker. It is probably the way you get most of your ideas and information-from television, radio, conversation, and lec-tures. If you do not listen well, you will not understand what you hear and may pass along your misunderstanding to others. Besides, in class-as in life-you will listen to many more speeches than you give. It is only fair to pay close attention to your classmates' speeches; after all, you want them to listen carefully to your speeches. An excellent way to improve your own speeches is to listen attentively to the speeches of other people. Over and over, instructors find that the best speakers are usually the best listeners. A side benefit of your speech class is that it offers an ideal opportunity to work on the art of listening. During the 95 percent of the time when you are not speaking, you have nothing else to do but listen and learn. You can sit there like a stone-or you can use the time profitably to master a skill that will serve you in a thousand ways. Listening and Critical Thinking One of the ways listening can serve you is by enhancing your skills as a critical thinker. We can identify four kinds of listening: Appreciative listening-listening for pleasure or enjoyment, as when we listen to music, to a comedy routine, or to an entertaining speech. Empathic listening-listening to provide emotional support for the speaker, as when a psychiatrist listens to a patient or when we lend a sympathetic ear to a friend in distress. Comprehensive listening-listening to understand the message of a speaker, as when we attend a classroom lecture or listen to directions for finding a friend's house. Critical listening-listening to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting or rejecting it, as when we listen to the sales pitch of a car salesperson or the cam-paign speech of a political candidate. Although all four kinds of listening are important, this chapter deals primarily with comprehensive listening and critical listening. They are the kinds of listening you will use most often when listening to speeches in class, when taking lecture notes in other courses, when communicating at work, and when responding to the barrage of commercials, political messages, and other persuasive appeals you face every day. They are also the kinds of listening that are most closely tied to critical thinking. As we saw in Chapter 1, critical thinking involves a number of skills. Some of those skills-summarizing information, recalling facts, distinguishing main points from minor points are central to comprehensive listening. Other skills of critical thinking-separating fact from opinion, spotting weaknesses in reasoning, judging the soundness of evidence-are especially important in critical listening. When you engage in comprehensive listening or critical listening, you must use your mind as well as your ears. When your mind is not actively involved, you may be hearing, but you are not listening. In fact, listening and critical thinking are so closely allied that training in listening is also training in how to think. At the end of this chapter, we'll discuss steps you can take to improve your skills. in comprehensive and critical listening. If you follow these steps, you may also become a better critical thinker. appreciative listening Listening for pleasure or enjoyment. empathic listening Listening to provide emotional support for a speaker. comprehensive listening Listening to understand the message of a speaker. critical listening Listening to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting or rejecting it.