Chapter 5: Listening and RespondingBy: Miranda Emery
What is listening?“The process of receiving constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages.”
Provide clarification, connect us to others, build trust and empathy, help us learn and remember material, and improve our ability to evaluate information
Hearing is a physiological process/ listening is cognitive
Listening only occurs when we put meaning to what we hear
50% shortly after and 20% two days later, yet 80% of execs believe listening is one of the most important skills
Types of Listening
AppreciativeGoal: to enjoy the thoughts and experiences of others
Situation: Casual social interaction
DiscriminativeGoal: Accurately understand the speaker’s meaning
May require reading “between the lines” and picking up on nonverbal cues
Situation: Listening to a Dr. to see if there is reason for concern
Types of Listening
ComprehensiveGoal: Not only to understand, but to learn, remember, and recall
Situation: Listening in Ms. Emery’s oral communications class
EmpathicGoal: To try to understand how someone else is feeling
Situation: Therapists, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists do this.
Types of Listening
CriticalGoal: To evaluate the worth of a message
Requires more psychological processing
Most demanding of the types
Requires that you understand and remember both the verbal and nonverbal message, assess the speaker’s credibility, and effectively listen all the time
Situation: Listening to a political candidate, apology from someone who has violated your trust
Steps of the Listening ProcessAttending- The process of focusing on what a speaker is saying regardless of the potential distractions of other competing stimuli
1. Get physically ready to listen
2. Resist mental distractions while you listen
3. Resist interrupting others
4. Hear a person out before you react
5. Observe nonverbal cues
Steps of the Listening Process
Understanding- Decoding a message accurately to reflect the meaning intended by the speaker.
1. Ask questions to gain additional information
Question- Statement designed to get further info or clarify info already received
2. Paraphrase the message to check your understanding
Paraphrase- Putting into words the ideas or feelings you have perceived from a message
Content paraphrase- Focused on the denotative meaning of the message
Feelings paraphrase- Response that captures the emotions attached to the content of a message.
Steps of the Listening Process
Paraphrasing effectivelyListen carefully
Notice what images and feelings you have experienced from the message
Determine what the message means to you
Create a message that conveys these images or feelings
Steps of the Listening Process3. Empathize with the speaker
Empathy- Intellectually identifying with or vicariously experiencing the feelings or attitudes of another.
Empathic responsiveness- When you experience an emotional response parallel to, and as a result of observing, another person’s actual or anticipated display of emotion.
Perspective taking- Imagining yourself in the place of another, most common form
Sympathetic responsiveness- Feeling concern, compassion, or sorrow for another because of the other’s situation or plight.
Steps of the Listening ProcessRemembering- Being able to retain information and recall it when needed.
1. Repeat the informationRepetition- Saying something aloud or mentally a few times after hearing it, helps store info in long-term memory, otherwise it is stored in short-term for as little as 20 seconds
2. Construct mnemonicsMnemonic device- Any artificial technique used as a memory aid.
3. Take notes
Steps of the Listening Process
Evaluating- Critically analyzing what you have heard to determine its truthfulness.
Factual statements- Accuracy can be verified
Inferences- Conjectures which may be based on fact or observation
1. Analyze the “facts” to determine if they are true
Often requires questions that test the evidence
2. Test inferences to determine whether they are valid
You are listening critically when you separate facts from inferences and then evaluate them as true or valid.
Steps of the Listening Process
• Responding (See page 100)– 1. Guidelines for responses that
offer emotional support• Supportive message- Comforting
statements that have a goal to reassure, bolster, encourage, soothe, console, or cheer up
– 2. Guidelines for responses that demonstrate respect when disagreeing or critiquing others
Thank you