Instructor Wrap Up - Wood Chapter 6

Mindful Listening

"One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears - by listening to them."

Dean Rusk

Key Concepts in this chapter:

ambushing

defensive listening

hearing

listening

listening for information

listening for pleasure

listening to support others

literal listening

mindfulness

minimal encouragers

monopolizing

paraphrasing

prejudgement

preoccupation

pseudolistening

remembering

responding

selective listening

Pg. 147 starts out by explaining The Listening Process.  The process of listening is a mult-sitep process:

Being Mindful

Physically Receiving Messages

Selecting and Organizing Information

Interpreting Communication 

Responding

Remembering

There is quite a bit more to listening than simply 'hearing' something, as the text mentions.  'Hearing' is a physiological process, while 'listening' is an active and complex process that involves our ears, minds, and hearts.

Also on this page the author mentions the idea of mindfulness.  "Mindfulness is being fully present in the moment", or what is called 'wide awakeness'.  Engaging in mindfulness is a choice, plain and simple.  When someone senses that they are being listened to in a mindful way, they tend to elaborate on their ideas and express themselves in more depth.  And isn't that what we want for the folks who we 'listen' to?

Pg. 148 covers the second step in the process:  Physically Receiving Messages.  This section covers ideas of the physiological reaction when receiving a message, listening impairments, and gender and listening.  We will camp in the gender section for a minute or two:  Isn't interesting that women and men tend to differ in their listening habits?  "Men tend to focus their hearing on specific content aspects of communication, whereas women generally are more likely to attend to the whole of communication, noticing details, tangents, and relationship-level meanings".

The third step as outlined by your text is Selecting and Organizing Material.  This discussion starts on page 148 and continues to pg. 149.  Folks have a tendency to selectively attend to some messages and elements in their environment.  This means that there are many factors that go into selective attention:  interests, cognitive structures, expectations and culture.  Once we select what we are going to focus on, we then organize the stimuli.

The fourth step is Interpreting Communication.  Your book says it best on pg. 149:  "The most important principle for effective interpretation is to be person-centered.  To be centered on the particular individual to whom you are listening, you engage in dual perspective so that you interpret others on their terms."

Responding is the next step.  This simply means communicating your attention and interest in what the other person is saying. Signs of responsiveness are: eye contact, nodding, attentive posture, and questions/comments.

The final aspect of the listening process is Remembering.  Remembering is the act of retaining what you have heard.  An interesting statistic on pg. 150:  "...we remember less than half of a message immediately after we hear it.  As time goes by, retention decreases further; we recall only about 35% of a message 8 hours after hearing it."

External and Internal Obstacles to Mindful Listening pg. 151-155
There are a number of both external and internal barriers to mindful listening.  External obstacles are:
Message Overload
Message Complexity
Noise

Internal Obstacles are:
Preoccupation
Prejudgment
Reacting to Emotionally Loaded Language
Lack of Effort
Failure to Adapt Listening Styles

Forms of Nonlistening are covered next starting on pg. 156.  In the previous section we discussed obstacles to mindful listening.  This is vastly different than nonlistening.  Nonlistening means that a person is simply not engaging in real listening.   There are six types:
Pseudolistening
Monopolizing
Selective Listening
Defensive Listening
Ambushing
Literal Listening

How many of these do you engage in?  This section directly relates to one of our discussion questions this week, so I will leave it up to you to discuss.

Adapting Listening to Communication Goals
This section is quite important.  Can you guess why?

There are a number of Communication Goals listed in your book starting on pg. 160:
Listening for Pleasure - Be mindful, control distractions and intereferences
Listening for Information - Be Mindful, Ask Questions, Control Obstacles, Use Aids to Recall, Organize Information
Listening to Support Others - Be Mindful, Be Careful of Expressing Judgments, Understand the Other Person's Perspective, Paraphrasing, Express Support

Do you notice a pattern here?  That's right - Mindful Listening.  Mindful listening is i.n.c.r.e.d.i.b.l.y. important, and is something we should practice quite a bit.  If you did not absorb all of the information in that section, you might want to go back and review it.

Have you ever wondered why in a lot of your communication classes the instructor covers the idea of listening in some respect?  It is because listening is 'the other half of communication'.  It is imperative that we mindfully listen when someone else speaks.  Whether it is a friend, family member, acquaintance, professor, etc...  they are communicating something.  Wouldn't it be great if we all tried active listening a bit more with the folks we come in contact with in our lives?


Thanks folks!
The Blogging Prof.