Active Listening

Listening is an important skill

We can define listening as follows
Listening is a process of receiving, interpreting, and
reacting to a message received from the speaker.
No communication process is complete without
listening
According to Management guru Tom Peters, listening
is an essential management and leadership skill

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Active Listening
Similarly effective listening is extremely important for
students, as they spend most of their time listening to
lectures
An Example
 In a biology class, the teacher asked the students to refer to
the book entitled “Origin of Species” by Darwin. One of the
students sincerely rummaged through the library book-
shelves looking for “Orange and Peaches”, but to his utter
dismay, he just could not find it.
In reality this is an embarrassing situation that could
happen to any of us who do not listen attentively.
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Active Listening
Several studies have indicated that Business
people spend almost 45% of their working time in
listening
Hearing and listening are not the same

People often use these two words

interchangeably.

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Active Listening
Hearing is dependent on the ears, and everyone can hear
without deliberate effort
Hearing is merely the vibration of sound waves on the eardrums
followed by the firing of electro-chemical impulses in the brain
On the other hand, listening requires voluntary attention and
then making sense of what is heard
It requires a conscious effort to interpret the sounds, grasp the
meanings of the words, and react to the message
The interpretation of sound signals is a cognitive act, which
completely depends on the knowledge of the listener and also
on his attitude towards the sender and the message

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Types of Listening
1. Appreciative listening
 This is listening for deriving aesthetic pleasure, as we do when
we listen to a comedian, musician, or entertainer

2. Empathetic listening
 When we listen to a distressed friend who wants to vent his
feelings, we provide emotional and moral support in the form
of empathetic listening.
 When psychiatrists listen to their patients, their listening is
classified as empathetic listening

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Types of Listening
3. Comprehensive listening
 This type of listening is needed in the class room when
students have to listen to the lecturer to understand and
comprehend the message.
 Similarly, when someone is giving you directions to find the
location of a place, comprehensive listening is required to
receive and interpret the message.

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4. Critical listening
 When the purpose is to accept or reject the message or to evaluate it
critically, one requires this type of listening.
 For example
 Listening to a sales person before making a purchase order
 listening to politicians making their election campaign speech involves
critical listening
 Similarly, when you read a book with the objective of writing a book review,
you use your critical abilities.

 Although all these types of listening are important, we mainly involve

ourselves comprehensive and critical listening.
 Even as students, you are primarily involved in these two types of
listening during classroom lectures or communicating work.

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Traits of a Good Listener
1. Being Non-evaluative

 Listener’s verbal and nonverbal behavior should suggest

the speaker that he is being properly heard and understood
 One should not evaluate the speaker for the ideas and
feelings he possesses
 Listener behavior should convey the impression to the
speaker that he/she is being accepted without making any
judgment of right or wrong, good or bad, suitable or
unsuitable

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Traits of a Good Listener
2. Paraphrasing
 If one wishes to clarify a point, he/she can simply
paraphrase what the speaker has said and enquire
from the speaker whether you have heard it accurately
 Use phrases like the following ones to ensure that you
have paraphrased the information correctly:
 ‘As I gather, you want to tell...

 “So you mean to say that. ..

 “Oh! your feeling towards.. .

 “Do you mean that. ..

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Traits of a Good Listener
3. Reflecting Implications
 One should go a bit beyond the contents of the speaker
indicating him your appreciation for his ideas and where
they are leading
 You can use phrases like:
 “I am sure if you did that, you would be in a position to.. “So this
might lead to a result which. .
 “So you are suggesting that we might..

 “Will that help us to alleviate the problem of. .

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Traits of a Good Listener
4. Reflecting Hidden Feelings
 Sometimes, you have to go beyond the explicit feelings and
contents of what is being said to unravel the underlying
feelings, intentions, beliefs, or values that may be influencing
the speaker’s words
 You try to empathize or identify yourself with the speaker, to
experience what he or she feels
 You can express your sentiments by using phrases such as:
 “If I were in your place, I would not have handled the situation so well.”
“That must have been a satisfying experience.”
 “If I was in such a situation, I would have sought the help of seniors.”

 “If that had happened to me, I’d have been very upset.”
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Traits of a Good Listener
5. Inviting Further Contributions
 In a situation where you haven’t heard or understood
enough yet to respond with empathy and
understanding, prompt the speaker to give you more
information
 Phrases such as the following can be used:
 Can you throw more light on.

 “It would be great if you can expand more on this.”

 ‘ that, what happened?”

 “How did you react when.. .

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Traits of a Good Listener
6. Responding Non-verbally
 Show as an active listener by adopting certain postures and sending
non-verbal signals which communicate your interest in what the
speaker is saying
 These include:
 regular eye contact (without staring),

 body leaning slightly towards the speaker;

 head nods and a slightly titled head.

 You can also occasionally use some receptive utterances as ‘yes’, ‘un-hum’, to
indicate that you are following what the speaker is saying.
 But be careful not to over do the uh-huh’s
 Attentive silence is more effective than too many grunts
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Active Listening VS Passive Listening
Listening to various forms of communication in an
unconscious manner is passive Listening
e.g., While at the dining table, we glance at the television
while busy eating or talking to someone else and some
sounds enter our ears.
We have to be alert to fully follow the dialogue and
develop the ability to listen to others patiently and
carefully
The responsibility of the listener is to show keenness
in the speaker and speech by his expressions, alertness,
and by asking questions about the speech if required.
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Active Listening VS Passive Listening
Exercise can certainly help you to improve your
listening skills:
Concentrate on the theme, supporting ideas, and also the
digression (departure from subject), if any, in the speech.
Write down the gist of what you heard.

A person’s body language, or non-verbal communication is

involuntary and therefore, more truthful.
Pay considerable attention to the physical messages
conveyed by a speaker in order to assess the accuracy and
sincerity of his speech.

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Dealing with Distractions
In the process of developing your active listening skills, you should
train yourself to avoid physical distractions and concentrate on the
message fully
An attractive face in the room, sometimes even the fragrance of
perfume, can be the reason for distraction
However, a careful listener has to exercise a great deal of mental
discipline to remain focused on the message sent by the speaker.
Often, after a period of continuous listening, people get tired and
start losing interest in the message.
Many a time, such a problem arises because of ‘brain time’. On an
average, a person speaks around 130—150 words per minute but has
the capacity to listen to 600—700 words per minute.

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Dealing with Distractions
 Since a listener’s capacity to absorb information is
much more than a speaker’s ability to talk, a lot of time
is available for the listener to evaluate the message
 Sometimes a listener focuses on the message in
fragments and hence complete attention is lost
 Effective listening is only possible if the listener patiently
listens to the complete speech
 Listeners require mental preparedness and energy to
concentrate on the speaker’s words as well as his non-
verbal cues of communication like posture, gesture,
eye contact, facial expressions, etc.
 Sometimes noise distracts the attention of the listener.
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Implications of Effective Listening
While working in an organization, you will use your
listening skills in a variety of situations:
listening to distressed and dissatisfied workers,

listening during telephonic conversations,

listening while taking instructions,

conducting a meeting, and many

Listening patiently to employees enables the managers to

feel the pulse of the organization.

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Implications of Effective Listening
 Demoralization sets in leading to lowered
productivity.
 Effective listening is very vital for the success of an
open-door policy.
 When employees are encouraged to freely walk into a
manager’s room and encouraged to speak up, they no
longer harbor negative feelings.
 Effective listening will thus improve working
conditions and nurture harmony and cohesion in the
organization if both management and employees
listen to each other’s messages patiently.
 The morale of the organization as a whole is
thereby boosted, resulting in increased productivity.
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Next Lecture

Effective Presentation Strategies

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