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The importance or improvement of listening skills
Strategies for effective listening skills
Effective listening strategies
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What is the primary reason you, personally, "tune out" and fail to listen effectively? What advantages and what problems does it result in? What specific steps can you, personally, take to become a better listener? It is in human nature to tune out the things we don’t want to hear or that do not agree with our views. It is important to listen to other for their side of the story in order to get the bigger picture. I may not always be right, so it is crucial to know what I can fix. I must listen to others because there is no way that I can self teach myself everything. There may be other views that I cannot account for. Other people may see something differently than I do. Although it may be something I would like to “tune out” I must make myself listen because their argument may be valid. Listening to others may help me comprehend an understanding of a confusing topic. Some scientific topics that are way outside my comprehension I may view as unreal. These topics can be theorized as possible. Many times I fail to listen because I cannot see it. Although tuning out something may ...
Another type of listening barrier that I have is differing speech rate and thought rate. My brain is fast at processing words and sometimes in moments I get bored in the conversation and I begin to daydream. This happened recently with a conversation with one of my classmates. I got so lost in a daydream that I did not know how to respond. Being a better listener takes time and dedication. Something that I learned from the textbook is that during a conversation summarizes their words sporadically throughout the conversation; it will help me to be focused in
Listening Without Judgment and Thinking Positively The sketch that was just been performed on stage by my friends shows you one of the consequences that can arise due to listening without judgment. There are many more consequences that you can imagine but I can tell you that they are all disastrous. Misunderstanding is a major factor which is the origin of fights in families.
The Importance of Listening for Professional and Personal Relationships Listening is essential for communication, yet is a skill in which most are lacking. Though we are listening constantly, knowing what to listen to requires an enormous amount of discipline and practice, which is vital for communicating effectively. Learning to listen will benefit all relationships from professional to personal and not being able to listen effectively can cause these relationships to deteriorate. “Indeed, although aware of the instrumentality of listening, even trained communicators often fail to listen correctly or at opportune times” (Cline, 2013). In order for all of areas of communication in an individual to flourish, listening must be emphasized.
A vital aspect of interpersonal communication is the style in which one listens. While every individual possesses their own preferred method of listening in communication, it can be enlightening to analyze our own strengths and weaknesses so as to maximize effectual communication. Within the confines of four main listening style categories, I have chosen those which best describe my own personal listening style.
Listening is the process of selecting, attending to, creating meaning from, remembering and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. I tend to not listen well when I’m angry or tired, and also when my mom tells me something she’s already told me before. I think sometimes I don’t listen to my mom because I experience listener burnout which means being weary of listening to other people. I believe I experience this because she has already told me something several times and I grow weary of hearing the same thing over and over. This affects me because my mom is my elder and I should listen to her because she is older and has obtained more knowledge about situations and events than I have. Also, I need to listen to her more because she is not going to tell me anything that would hurt me. My plan to alter my listening skills is to use the three steps presented in Chapter 5, stop, look, and listen. To stop I should not attend to off- topic self-talk by putting my own thoughts aside and make a mindful effort to listen; second I should look by examining nonverbal cues of those involved in the communication; I also need to accurately interpret nonverbal messages to help note what someone is saying verbally and nonverbally. I can also interpret nonverbal messages to receive the Meta message which is a message about a message. Finally, I should listen, and not only
The physical assessment is the first step of the nursing process. This is a detailed examination of the body from head to toe which involves observation/inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation. It is important to perform a series of tests and evaluations in order to create an accurate and effective plan of care for patients. Assessing a client from a holistic point of view is important. This is a patient-centered approach, and it shows the client the care they are receiving is as an individual.
This paper explores two personal experiences of incompetent listening. The first personal experience is when someone engaged in narcissistic listening to myself. The second personal experience was when I engaged in selective listening.
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
According to Glen E.E. and Pood E.A.’s assessment “Listening Self-Inventory”, I have room for improvement. I scored a 44 out of a range of 15-75. Their assessment said “if you score 60 or above, your listening skills are fairly well honed. Scores of 40 or less indicate you need to make a serious effort at improving your listening skills.” I lean more toward the latter statement. I think if I were to have taken this same assessment four years ago, I would have scored far below the 40 point mark. I was a terrible listener. I did not think some people where worth listening to after a certain point of disagreement and I would merely pretended to pay attention and care about what they were saying. Nonverbal communication, anticipating the other’s
Every business consists of a variety of communication activities such as listening, speaking, questioning, gathering and participating in small work groups. The listening skill is one of the most important aspects of communication process. It helps to understand and read the other person’s message. Effective listening skills create positive workplace relationships which influence our opinions and responsiveness to one another.
The importance of being a good listener has brought me to realize the consciousness of how to be more considerate of my friends and family when they are trying to communicate with me and I am in turn trying to communicate with them. Communication has taught me to remove myself from the picture sometime and see in the eyes of people around. I find that when I am more attentive to the needs of those who are trying to connect with me, life is much easier.
The characteristics, scenarios and useful tips we’ve explored demonstrates why listening is so vital in our everyday lives. Without effective listening, we are depriving ourselves from being involved in meaningful conversations. Communication is key for any healthy relationship and listening is part of that process.
As we all know the world can throw us some curves and change the course one may expect in their life. Listening to what others are saying is to help them in some way or another. As a counselor my goal is to apply myself as an effective listener because it’s required and if my listening skills are not up to par, then there is no reason to be in that field profession. There was a time when a friend was relying on me to listen to a problem she was having in her marriage, instead of listening my reaction was “you need a marriage counselor” she then became disappointed because my focus wasn’t on what she was saying instead my focus was on what she didn’t say and only then was my response would have been given. This to me was a mental distraction because the focus was on what my reply would have been instead of what she was actually saying to me. Listening mindfully requires us to be completely aware of what is being said and why, it is here we an understanding can be made clear (Hall D. 2017). A person who is sharing openness is most always appreciated and valued over closed mindedness in both face to face communication and online (Joseph A. DeVito 2012). Over the course of my own life there have been many occasions where effective listening was required, academically, emotionally, mentally and on a support level of
To be effective listeners, the listening process should be incorporated into our lives. We should be attentive to what people say, clarify what the speaker is trying to come across, and respond in a way the speaker can understand what we are saying. I think I was aware that I needed some improvement in certain areas of this process but I feel as everything is slowly changing. In the future, I’m going try not to interrupt people, get distracted, tune out, and try to get a bigger picture of what the person is telling me. If good listening habits are applied in our day-to-day life, we can easily communicate with anyone and everyone.
A skill, according the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, is a learned power of doing something competently: a developed aptitude or ability. The skill of listening is a skill that I believe everyone should have but most people lack. Many people do not realize that listening is not merely the act of hearing a sound but of paying close attention to what someone is saying and trying to understand the message that they are trying to relate to you. Most times people say they are listening when in all actuality they are merely hearing you but not even attempting to understand what is being spoken of. The advantages of being a good listener are vast. This skill can positively affect many parts of our everyday life and interaction with people. Nevertheless, it is a skilled that is overlooked in today’s unmindful society. The reason I believe that listening is of such importance is because nowadays people have developed the mentality of “every man for himself.” People are not concerned about their fellows anymore. We are only concerned about our own issues and problems. Listening is a skill that is acquired throughout a lifetime. It is an important virtue when it comes to communication.People should be taught from childhood the importance of learning how to listen. If we realized how much we would benefit from being good listeners, I believe that things would change. Lack of listening skills affects marriages, parents and children, teachers and students, employers and employees, foreign affairs, and the list goes on.