Listening Styles

Communication is the process of exchanging or expressing information between two or more people. The information can be conveyed using words, sound, sign or behavior to make it more effective to the recipient. One of the common way of sending the information is through talking, speech or announcement or well known as verbal communication. Through this act, in order for the information to be effectively perceived by the audience, the audience need to have a good listening skill.

Listening is different than hearing because listening involves ones attention to a sound or in communication case to an information send by the speaker verbally. In contrast, hearing is the ability of perceiving sound unintentionally and it is done unconsciously by the hearing organ or the human ear. Human are blessed with two ears but only one mouth. This explains why listening is twice as hard as talking.

Scholars in communication field have identified many type of human listening styles. This essay will discuss about listening styles and how those styles contribute to effective communication strategies and planning when human conveyed information verbally. The styles that will be discussed are: emphatic, objective, non-judgmental, critical, surface, depth, active and passive listening.

Emphatic listening is also known as reflective listening. It is the act of listening with an intention to understand what the speaker is feeling, understanding the content of the information conveyed by the speaker and also the intention of the speaker. Listener will have to get closer to the speaker by showing empathy toward the speaker through asking sensitively to encourage self-disclosure from the speaker. The effective way to do this type of listening style is by r...

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...nd does not really listen to what is being said to avoid more conflict.

From the elaboration on above styles, non-judgmental and critical listening tend to contribute more to effective communication strategies and planning. It contribute to effective communication by making listener to listen with an open mind to a speaker before judging. What matter is the message the speaker want to convey not the physical self who delivered the message. After obtaining the full message and taking note of the key points from the message by listening critically, then listener can have opinion on the situation. This will make the communication process more effective.

In a nutshell, no matter what style chosen for an effective communication, one should listen contently. This will helps the message to be fully understood and proper action can be executed accordingly to the situation.