Active Listening Essay

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As a professional in today’s society, it is greatly important to be able to communicate effectively with other professionals, with clients, and with those that are encountered in daily living. In order to communicate in a proper manner, not only is talking and non-verbal communication, but a large aspect is the ability to listen. Listening is a vital task in order to build a relationship and find meaning in someone else’s words. In order to find this meaning one must follow the characteristics of active listening, face the challenges to listening, and reflect upon one’s own listening skills. Listening is an aspect of communication that vital the building of understanding and of a relationship between individuals. Listening can be an active …show more content…

As The Gift of Listening describes, “Opening one’s heart and listening at a deep level does not come easily and is rarely achieved simply by life experience” (Browning & Waite, 2010, p. 151) There are different aspects to being a good listener that are often difficult to achieve and lead to poor listening. One significant challenge to listening is the attention needed in order to actively listen to another person. Proper listening does not occur due to a passive process but instead it takes deliberate action and thought towards what a person in saying. Like previously stated, actively listening is achieved by sitting in a comfortable and open way and maintaining good eye contact. When a person does not exhibit these techniques good listening often does not occur. The challenge of utilizing different techniques in order to listen to others in a better way often gets blocked by barriers that make active listening unable to occur. In our society today one major barrier to listening is technology. In a casual setting, proper listening often doesn’t occur due to someone being tied to their cell phone. The millennial generation is often guilty of passively listening to others due to the mobile technology that is being used today. Many conversations occur without eye contact or full focus on what the other has to say and instead is spent staring at a …show more content…

While in high school I had to have very good listening skills while working within the choir, band, and in the theatre department. These different extracurricular activities had many in leadership positions where I often had to listen to what the director was telling me needed to happen and then I personally would have to go lead the group in doing so. Along with this I always the one people had to go to then with any concerns over what is going on. This led me to build a very strong listening skill to be able to mediate between the adults and students. As a nurse, I believe that listening is one of the largest aspects to the career. Without a nurse who listens properly, details are missed which can lead to harm upon the patient. When I work at my nursing home, my residents often compliment my communication skills because unlike most other workers, when cleaning people up and getting them ready for bed, I have full conversations with them. They are all very appreciative of me taking time out of my hectic work night in order to listen to how there day is going or on how their children are

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