Monday, February 21, 2011
Listening: A Dying Art
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Everyone knows how to listen, isn’t it? Everyone listens in his daily routine. If someone asks you if you can listen, you might come up with similar reactions. Everyone thinks they can listen well but the fact is very few people can actually truly listen.
Some people are considered as good listeners by their friends and family, while, some are considered as bad listeners. The good listeners have an effect on others that makes them want to open up to these people. They comfortably share their thoughts and feelings with these people. There are people who think that they are helping someone by listening to them but they’re actually just hearing and not listening. A lot of people cannot differentiate between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physiological process where a person perceives a sound via his auditory sense, while, listening involves interpreting and understanding the message behind the auditory signals.
We often get pulled out of a conversation as we are prepare an answer, while, the other person has not yet finished. In our best intention to serve we often worry about things, hence, lose the right track of listening. We worry about our response; we try to compile our answer, do we know it? How will we respond? Is our response going to satisfy the other person?
At times the whole process of conversation is a failure because we our ability to hear for granted. Just because we can hear what the other person is saying, we assume that we also, totally understand it. This is not the case, actually, we don’t even realize and we have lost the track of whole conversation. We often get distracted by the ordinary thoughts, hence, losing the crucial details of what someone is telling us.
At times the whole process of conversation is a failure because we our ability to hear for granted. Just because we can hear what the other person is saying, we assume that we also, totally understand it. This is not the case, actually, we don’t even realize and we have lost the track of whole conversation. We often get distracted by the ordinary thoughts, hence, losing the crucial details of what someone is telling us.
We don’t just need to hear words, rather listen to them. We need to understand what the other person is saying. This is the only way we can satisfy someone by having an effective communication. We need to consciously push ourselves to listen actively or it is not going to work.
If you find it difficult to focus, you can improve your skills by repeating the message in your head as the speaker talks. Try focusing on each words and how it relates in the sentence. This can be challenging but with practice you can turn it into a habit, and with time you will be doing this exercise almost effortlessly.
Letting the speaker finish first is one of the rules of ethics as well as effective communication. If you have something to say, first listen to the speaker and let him finish. If you interrupt the speaker, and even you, might also get lost. If you are worried about forgetting your question then quietly note it on a paper because thinking too much about your question is distracting.
Letting the speaker finish first is one of the rules of ethics as well as effective communication. If you have something to say, first listen to the speaker and let him finish. If you interrupt the speaker, and even you, might also get lost. If you are worried about forgetting your question then quietly note it on a paper because thinking too much about your question is distracting.
Keywords: listen, listening, speaker, communication, effective communication, skill, conversation.
This post was written by: Franklin Manuel
Franklin Manuel is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Twitter
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