Do you talk when you need to listen?

Of the four skills involved in effective communication—listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is the most important. It is crucial to listen carefully because we spend more time listening then doing anything else in our waking hours.

 More significantly, the quality of our listening greatly affects both the personal and vocational dimensions of our lives. Our ability to listen directly influences our friendships, our family relationships and our efficiency at work.

Unfortunately, few people are good listeners, as hardly any attention is paid to the development of this skill. On the contrary we receive subtle influences that provide early training in non-listening.

Children are exposed to a steady diet of anti-listening advice. We often come across things like “We do not listen to those things in our family”, “Don’t pay any attention to him “, “Pretend you haven’t noticed”,” Do not take it so seriously.” 

 

Our schooling is equally responsible for inculcation of ineffective listening habits. In most school systems, rigorous training is given to reading, speaking and writing; however there are no proper training programmes for the development of listening skill.

So powerful is this training is this training in anti-listening, that people rarely comprehend what exactly is involved in effective listening and most confuse it with mere hearing.

In reality, the two are strikingly different and it is important to understand the distinction between the two. While hearing is the ability to perceive sounds with the ears, listening is a combination of hearing what another person is saying and an involvement with the person who is talking.

To quote the words of a leading ‘guru’ of effective communication, Professor Drakeford “hearing is a word used to describe the physiological sensory processes by which auditory sensations are received by the ears and transmitted to the brain. 

Listening, on the other hand, refers to a more complex psychological procedure involving interpreting and understanding the significance of the sensory experience. One can hear what another person is saying without really listening to him”.

It would not be an exaggeration to state that 75 per cent of oral communication is ignored, mis-understood or quickly forgotten mainly because of poor listening. All too often the speaker’s words go into one ear and immediately move out of the other. This improper listening is responsible for the tussles we so often witness between interpersonal relationships. 

In fact, the so-called generation gap is largely a result of this casual attitude to listening. We find teenagers often complaining that their parents only hear them talk. Many conflicts and misunderstandings at the work place also crop up primarily due to ineffective listening.

For an overall improvement of our listening ability we should be on guard not to be inattentive and must pay special attention to avoid interruptions and roadblocks in oral communication. There is little doubt that improvement of listening skills would help us to lead a more fulfilling life, both on the personal as well as the professional front.