What do you really want when you communicate with someone else? You might need a question answered, or for someone to affirm that a job is being done correctly. Maybe you just want to be heard. This tremendous need to be listened to is crucial to human relations. Most people have a very strong need to have others hear them, understand them, and process the infor- mation they receive. This need is so strong that when listening is purposely withheld, the speaker’s self-esteem can suffer.
Everyone needs to know they can be heard. You will probably be amazed at the results you can get once you become tuned in to other people and their needs. The need to be a good listener to others is often ignored by people who consider themselves good communicators. In Harvard Business Review, Ralph Nichols and Leonard Stevens wrote, “Immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only half of what he has heard—no matter how carefully he thought he was listening. . . .
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
Actions on the part of the listener can contribute to miscommunication. What are some of the causes of poor listening?
The “Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting,” or the
“Ebbinghaus Curve,” developed by Herman Ebb- inghaus (1850–1909), shows that we remember less than half of what we’ve heard after an hour and about one-fourth after two months.
Source: H. E. Ebbinghaus, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (H. A. Ruger and C. E. Bus- senius, Trans.) (New York: Dover, 1964). (From original work published 1885.)
mo re a b o u t...
Two months after listening to a talk, the average listener will remember only about 25 percent of what was said.” 1 Other recent studies have reached very similar conclusions. 2 What makes people miss so much of what they hear?
Selective Listening
There are some legitimate reasons for poor listening. For instance, in modern society everyone is constantly bombarded with messages. No one could pos- sibly give full attention to every message, so many people practice selective listening , which is when you deliberately choose what you want to hear. If you are in a personal environment with even more demands on your attention, the problem is greater. For example, picture a home with young children chatter- ing and constantly trying to get attention; or a busy office with phones ring- ing, people talking, and keyboards clattering. In these circumstances, people
often become selective listeners by default. The main cause of selective listening is information over-
load . Another form of information overload has increasingly come from our own “wired” culture.
For example, with a person’s smartphone now serv- ing as her conduit for all of her calls, texts, e-mails, Tweets, calendar alerts, and more, it can be diffi- cult to choose when, and on what, to focus one’s attention. Sometimes better listening may simply be a matter of taking a break from technology—by going “offline” and refocusing on face-to-face com- munication. You are overwhelmed with incoming information and have to decide which information will be processed and remembered. Information overload is just one cause of poor listening skills.
Many other reasons for poor listening come from bad communication habits. For example, when many people assume a subject will be too dif- ficult for them to understand, they fail to listen. If they had listened, they may have seen how clear and understandable the subject was, or they could have narrowed down the difficulty with the sub- ject. The opposite often happens, too. A listener might reject a speaker because the message seems too basic and beneath the listener’s level of knowl- edge. In either case, the message is lost.
When you are in a group, listening to a single speaker, you can easily allow your mind to wander.
If you are attending a business meeting or confer- ence, the success of the meeting can be destroyed by this habit. One reason for this tendency is that most humans have a capacity for listening at a speed that far exceeds the ability of the fastest speaker. You could listen and comprehend up to
selective listening The type of listening that happens when a listener deliberately chooses what he or she wants to pay attention to.
information overload The type of listening that happens when a listener is overwhelmed with incoming information and has to decide which information will be processed and remembered;
this is a common cause of poor listening skills.
500 words per minute; the average public speaker travels through a message at about 125 words per minute. How you spend that extra time and energy often determines your effectiveness as a listener. 3 If you can keep your focus on the speaker and use the free time to take notes or think about what is being said, you will hear more and remember more.
Tuning Out
Some people simply refuse to listen to co-workers or other people due to prejudice ; they won’t listen to people from different ethnic backgrounds or social classes, or from different parts of the world. Some people won’t lis- ten to teachers, or young people, or to old people; some don’t think men are credible, some don’t think women are credible. Prejudice can be more subtle than these examples, though. Sometimes a person looks unintelligent to the listener. Prejudice can also overlap with jealousy. Some people won’t listen to a speaker who seems a little bit too perfect. People who want to improve listening skills should watch their personal listening habits because the process of doing business can be badly hampered by prejudice. Prejudice will be covered more fully in Chapter 14.
Red flag words and expressions are those that bring an immediate emotional response (usually negative) from the listener, generally because of strong beliefs on the subject. Some red flag words have implied mean- ings beyond their literal meaning. Words such as communist or terrorist might begin a flood of emotions that would prevent some people from hearing any- thing else for quite a while. The word sex might get similar results, although the emotions may be different. 4
People do not hear what their co-workers really say for a variety of rea- sons. Listening expert Anthony Allesandra says that one major cause under- lies most poor listening habits. From childhood, most people have been taught that talking requires energy, attention, and organization, but that lis- tening is a passive, compliant behavior. Starting from kindergarten, children in Western society are taught to be assertive and to express themselves effec- tively. Until recently, though, little has been done to teach what Dr. Allesan- dra calls active listening, which is listening with greater concentration, less tolerance for distractions, and more feedback to the speaker. 5
When you improve your listening skills, as you can learn to do from Strategy for Success 6.1 on page 144, you will find that you learn more from
prejudice
Prejudice in communication is the unwillingness to listen to members of groups the listener believes are inferior, such as other ethnic groups or women. It can also take more subtle forms.
red flag words Words that bring an immediate emotional response (usually negative) from the listener, generally because of strong beliefs on the subject.
active listening Listening with greater concentration, less tolerance for distractions, and more feedback to the speaker.
Choon-Lan was explaining impatiently to Rick, for the umpteenth time, how to fill out the requisitions forms correctly. In the process, she was also scolding him for not paying better attention to her directions. Meanwhile, Rick
seemed to be lost in space. “Are you listening to me?”
she asked bluntly. “No,” he replied, “to be honest, I was thinking of the next thing I was going to say to you to defend myself.”
speakers than a poor listener does. You will also gain more speakers’ respect as someone who understands their messages and cares enough to actively listen.