1 The heart of listening “Nature has given us one tongue, but two ears, so that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak” EPICETUS

2 Listening and communication DeVito, J., O’Rourke, S., & O’Neill, L. (2000). Human communication: The New Zealand edition. Auckland: Pearson. p. 9

3 Definition of listening “Listening is not the same as hearing…listening involves a series of five steps: receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding”. De Vito, J. (2007). The interpersonal communication book. Pearson: Boston. p. 103

4 Stages of listening 1Receiving: This involves the two following stages Sensing We use hearing and sight to receive the message We pick up on verbal and non-verbal communication cues as well as what is left out of the communication It is important here to avoid distractions and avoid interrupting at this stage Attending This is the additional part of “receiving” We attend to the speaker during this stage We engage with the speaker by using appropriate non-verbal cues 2Understanding We decode what the speaker is saying We decode both the words and non-verbal cues

5 Stages of listening 3Remembering We retain what the speaker has said to us However, this is retention of what we have decoded. This may include different meanings from what the speaker intended to communicate 4Evaluating We place judgment on what has been said A sub-conscious process We will learn more about this in week 12 when we discuss intercultural communication 5Responding We either respond while the speaker is still sending his/her message (eg. nodding, verbal encouragers) OR after the speaker has finished talking Remember, interpersonal communication is TRANSACTIONAL; these stages will occur continuous and cyclically Slides 4 & 5 were adapted from DeVito, J. (2007). The interpersonal communication book. Pearson: Boston.

6 Barriers to listening Judgement We can have pre-conceptions about the speaker We can evaluate the message before we have all the information Preoccupation We sometimes are not 100% attentive to the speaker We become non-participants in the communication process Pseudo-listening Pseudo means false; pseudo listening is therefore false listening We often pretend we are listening We use fake cues, eg. nodding, verbal cues like “yes” etc

7 Barriers to listening Semantics These are the language barriers that causes listening barriers We often do not clarify effectively if there are language barriers Excessive Talking Although interpersonal communication is TRANSACTIONAL, we need to remember to be a listener…this means not dominating as a sender We sometimes talk more than we listen Fear We sometimes communicate with people who intimidate us or who have power over us, eg. our boss. This can effect how well we listen Fear is a key psychological barrier to communication Slides 6 & 7 were adapted from Devito, J. (2007). The interpersonal communication book. Pearson: Boston

8 Types of listening We all listen for very different reasons. There are many different types of listening, for different contexts and situations and personalities Participatory Listening (aka active listening) We need to participate when listening We need to participate verbally and non-verbally We can be participatory listeners by clarifying points that we do not understand and providing feedback to the sender “Active listening serves several important functions. First, it helps you as a listener check your understanding of what the speaker has said and, more important, what he or she meant” (Devito, 2007, p. 113)

9 Types of listening Passive Listening (aka inactive listening) Sometimes passive listening is appropriate Allows the speaker to have time to consider what they want to say Can be perceived as supportive However it can also be interpreted as apathetic Empathic Listening Empathy: seeing the world through the other person’s eyes; understanding the other person’s emotions, experiences etc We are empathic listeners when we aim to understand how the sender is feeling Objective Listening Even though empathic listening is preferred, sometimes we need to be objective listeners Sometimes others need someone to listen without bias

10 Types of listening Non-judgmental Listening and Critical Listening An effective listener will adopt both non-judgmental and critical listening strategies We should endeavour to first listen non-judgmentally, however critical listening involves having critical thought. This is an important part of being a communicator (thinking for ourselves) Surface versus Depth Listening We usually receive communication messages on different levels An effective listener will try to decode messages on different levels We surface listen for the LITERAL meanings We adopt deeper listening to gain deeper meanings of what people say to us Slides 8-10 were adapted from De Vito, J. (2004). The interpersonal communication book. Pearson: Boston

11 Chinese character: to listen This Chinese character – to listen - is a summary of how to effectively listening: YOU EYES UNDIVIDED ATTENTION HEART EAR