STYLES OF LISTENING

Listening constitutes several processes of receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding to communications. The act of listening enables learning, acquiring of information, forming and maintaining relationship, as well as influencing and posing effect on the attitude and behaviors of others. Styles of listening can be divided into four contrastive pairs; empathic-objective listening, nonjudgmental-critical listening, surface-depth listening and active-passive listening.

Firstly, empathic-objective listening refers to the extent to which you focus on feeling what the speaker is feeling. To empathize during listening is to feel with others, seeing the world as they see it and to feel to some degree, what they feel. Meanwhile, objective listening is to go beyond empathy and measure meanings and feelings against some objective reality. Although for most communication situations empathic listening is the preferred mode of responding, there are times when engaging in objective listening is necessary. For example, when someone is expressing resentment, he is usually overflowing with emotions. In this situation, empathic listening requires the understanding on why the he is behaving in such manner. Yet, detaching (the listener) later to view objectively shall give the listener a glimpse of unwanted or bad encounters the he might have gone through.

Secondly, nonjudgmental-critical listening refers to the extent to which you accept and support the speaker. Listening with an open mind, with a view toward simply understanding is nonjudgmental as judgment is suspended until the relevant messages are fully understood. On the other hand, critical listening considers the view towards making some kind of evaluation that helps ...

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Secondly, empathic listening considers the sensitivity to the emotions being expressed. This is a core skill that strengthens the interpersonal effectiveness of individual. In communication, context and culture are inseparable. Those communicators who lack sense are likely to cause mishaps and trigger offensive delivery of information.

Thirdly, empathic listening involves the ability to reflect to the substance and feelings. It is neither advisable nor necessary for listener to agree with the speaker, yet it would be sufficient to let he knows that someone cares to being a resource to help resolving a problem, even just by lending the ears to listen.

Generally, the underlying need of effective communication strategies and planning is to be acknowledged. Ignorance shown through an inappropriate listening style shows aloofness and lack of interest.