6

Listening

WHAT IS LISTENING?

To listen is to pay thoughtful attention to what someone is saying. It is a deliberate act of attentively hearing a person speak. It is the mental process of paying undivided attention to what is heard. Listening is more than hearing, which is just the physical act of senses receiving sounds. Hearing involves the ears, but listening involves the ears, eyes, heart, and mind. It is rightly said that listening is an essential component of communication. Without this element, fruitful communication is not possible. Listening occurs when the receiver of the message wishes to learn, or be influence or changed by the message. When someone is interested in actively hearing, they are listening. Exhibit 6.1 shows the importance of listening in our daily lives.

Studies conducted since the 1930s reveal that 70 per cent of our waking time goes into communication. The pie chart below illustrates the activities that take up various portions of this 70 per cent:

Note that this break-up reflects the norms. The figures would differ from group to group. For example, for a group of young students, “speaking” would be lower than “hearing” (or listening), and their “reading” and “writing” figures will also be higher. For a group of teachers, “speaking” would be high.

Exhibit 6.1 The Importance of Listening

How Do We Listen?

Listening is not passive. It is a deliberate act of concentrating on sound waves that the auditory nerve sends to the brain. As a first step in the listening process, the listener focuses his or her attention on what is essential in the communication. At the same time, he or she tries to understand, interpret, and register what is received. It is not easy to pay undivided attention to a speaker, and without giving proper attention to developing listening skills, many people remain poor listeners.

An Indian saying draws attention to the natural fact that we have two ears but one tongue. Hence, we should listen twice as much as we speak.

Listening, like speaking, reading, and writing, is a skill that can be dramatically improved through training. In this chapter therefore, we will discuss some basic things about listening, such as the complete process from hearing to conceptualizing, causes for poor listening, and some techniques of improving listening as a voluntary behaviour.

Listening As a Management Tool

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defnes listening “considering what someone says and accepting their advice”. In this sense, far-sighted business heads and senior executives use careful listening to benefit from the valuable views, perceptions, and experiences of junior and middle level workers of the company. They often owe many an initiative or cost-cutting measure to suggestions given by juniors in informal sessions. By listening to what others say about a specific situation, that is by considering and accepting the advice of others, the company succeeds in taking the best possible decision and effectively implementing it.

An example of successful “Management by Listening” is the case of Maruti Udyog, which has flourished using former Managing Director Jagdish Khattar's innovative methods of seeking suggestions from employees.¹ Maruti's decision to showcase a concept car at Delhi's annual Auto Expo was born out of an event called “Tea with the MD”. Almost every fortnight, Khattar used to get together with a group of young Maruti engineers and managers in an informal meeting that encouraged them to articulate their ideas for the company's growth. Khattar's purpose was to elicit valuable suggestions for Maruti's growth by holding informal tea-sessions with his engineers and managers or by walking around at dealers' conventions, urging his dealers to make suggestions for improving sales and distribution. This was how he hit upon a formula that saved the company nearly INR 4 million.

Realizing that dealers hesitated to express themselves in an open forum, Khattar urged each of them to put down three of their suggestions on a piece of paper. He said, “On the five-hour flight back from Bangkok to Delhi, I went through each and every sheet. Our dealers had made several suggestions on how we could de-bottleneck distribution. I realized that increasing the sales force and opening small dealership extensions in rural and semi-urban areas could easily cut down on investments.”

Khattar would routinely talk with and listen to youngsters before walking into his office. His example demonstrates how providing opportunities to others to express valuable suggestions holds the key to the successful management of problems.

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE LISTENING

Listening is an integrated process, which consists of the following phases: undivided attention, hearing, understanding, interpreting, evaluating, empathizing and conceptualizing.

An explanation of these aspects of the process of listening would be helpful before proceeding. These phases do not occur in succession, but instead operate concurrently and in tandem. All aspects of oral or verbal communication require one to focus on what is being said, understand it, and register it as part of one's body of knowledge and experience.

• Undivided attention: Effective listening requires a certain frame of mind. The process of listening is rooted in attentively hearing the message. Undivided attention admits no distractions and no intrusive thoughts or ideas that are unrelated to the message. To concentrate on what is being said, an earnest listener would focus on the message and not let other things compete for his or her attention. The listener in this phase discriminates between thoughts, ideas, or images that belong in his or her focus of attention and those that float on its margin and must be kept from entering into conscious consideration.
• Hearing: Listening involves hearing distinct sounds and perceiving fine modulations in tone. The receiver recognizes the shape of words and intonation patterns. Familiarity with the sound of words and the spoken rhythm of speech contributes to the attentiveness of the listener. Pitch, voice modulations, and the quality of sound are equally important for hearing with the right attention.
• Understanding: A listener can hear words, but must listen to know their intended meaning. Perfect communication is when the full meaning of what is said has been understood. This includes words, tone, and body talk. A good listener hears words, observes body movements, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements, and notices variations in tone and pitch of voice. If the listener attends only to words without paying close attention to how they are said, he or she may be missing the real, intended meaning of those words.
• Interpreting: Understanding and interpretation follow the phase of hearing. The listener attempts to comprehend what is heard. Understanding the language may not be enough for fully comprehending the message and successfully participating in the act of communication. It should be accompanied by the ability to interpret what is communicated, which occurs when the listener takes account of his or her own knowledge and experience.
• Evaluating: Communication requires that the listener has the critical ability to see for himself or herself the value of what is being discussed or heard. It is only then that the listener can closely follow the argument. The evaluation of content is closely related to the listeners own interest in what is being communicated.
• Empathizing: A sympathetic listener sees the speaker's point of view. He or she may not agree with what is said, yet such a listener allows the other person to say what he or she wants to say.
• Conceptualizing: Conceptualization occurs when the listener finally assimilates what has been heard in the context of his or her own knowledge and experiences. This is why listening is not only important, but also indispensable for perfect communication.

PROBLEMS IN EFFECTIVE LISTENING

Listening is a voluntary behaviour that can be easily affected by internal or external factors that can act as barriers to good listening.

Lack of Concentration

Many times listeners are not able to concentrate on what is being heard. There may be several reasons for this. There could be external factors responsible for the inability to listen properly. For example, there may be noise inside the room or loud music being played nearby. This external noise can be shut of in several ways. But, the internal factors within the listener's mind that interfere with concentration are more serious and difficult to avoid or manage. These can be overcome through practice once the listener is made aware that they are problematic.

Reasons for not concentrating include:

• Hearing faster than speaking: Humans normally talk at nearly 120 to 125 words per minute, but the brain is capable of receiving 500 to 600 words per minute. The listener's brain, therefore, must deal with gaps between words, and this gap tends to be filled by other thoughts and images. This phenomenon interferes with concentration. For example, some political leaders or religious preachers deliver t heir speeches with prolonged pauses every few words or sentences. They may be using the pauses as a rhetorical device to emphasize their point. However, these pauses may instead break the listener's attentiveness by letting him or her mentally wander away from the topic to thoughts about the speaker's fluency or halting speech, or altogether unrelated issues, such as what he or she ate for breakfast. In such situations, there may not be much a listener can do to remain attentive. However, if he or she keeps looking at the speaker with steadfast eyes, the mind's tendency to wander could be significantly controlled.
• Paying attention to the speaker and not the speech: Many times listeners fail to listen properly because they are distracted by the speaker's face or dress or manner of delivery, just as if a dancer is very beautiful, we may be distracted by his or her beauty and miss the beauty of the dance. Thus, it is important to pay attention to the speech and its contents rather than focus on external factors that are not relevant.
• Listening too closely: The purpose of listening is to get the full meaning of what is said. The speaker's point is understood by looking for the central idea underlying individual words and non-verbal signs and signals. So when the listener tries not to miss a single word or detail of what the speaker is saying, he or she may get lost in the details and may miss the point.

Unequal Statuses

In organizations, there are formal and informal status levels that affect the effectiveness of face-to-face oral communication. A subordinate would generally listen more and speak less while interacting with his or her superior. The exchange of ideas is blocked by diffidence on the part of the subordinate because of the superior position of the speaker. Upward oral communication is not very frequent in organizations. Fear of the speaker's superior status prevents free upward flow of information. This limits free and fair exchange of ideas.

The Halo Efect

Te awe in which a speaker is held by the listener affects the act of listening. If the speaker is greatly trusted and held in high esteem as an honest person, his or her statements are readily taken as true. Oral communication is thus conditioned by the impressions of the listener about the eminence of the speaker. The listener's impressions and not the intrinsic worth of the message determine the effectiveness of such communication. For instance, due to the halo effect, buyers may go by a trusted seller's view rather than by their own judgment of a product's quality.

Exhibit 6.2 Differences in the Listening Process

Complexes

Lack of confidence or a sense of superiority may prevent proper interaction between persons in different positions. Sometimes an individual may suffer from a sense of inferiority and therefore, fail to take the initiative or involve himself or herself in conversation, dialogue, or other forms of oral communication. Similarly, some persons consider themselves too important to condescend to talk with others. Often, these are misplaced notions of self-worth, but they do block oral communication.

A Closed Mind

Listening, to a large extent, depends on one's curiosity to know things. Some individuals believe that they know everything in a field or subject. Their minds refuse to receive information from other sources. In addition, some persons feel too satisfed with their way of doing things to change or even discuss new ideas. A closed state of mind acts as a barrier to oral communication, which demands a readiness and willingness on the part of the listener to enter into dialogue.

Poor Retention

In dialogue or two-way oral communication, a logical sequence of thoughts is essential for successful communication. To speak coherently and comprehend completely, one has to understand the sequence of ideas. The structure of thoughts must be received and retained by the listener to understand arguments. The cues that signal the transition from one set of ideas to another must be retained by the listener to be able to grasp the full sense of the message. In case of poor retention, the listener fails to relate what he or she hears with what he or she had heard earlier. Moreover, if the listener fails to remember previous discussions, the whole conversation is likely to be lost in the absence of any written record.

Premature Evaluation and Hurried Conclusions

Listening patiently until the speaker completes his or her argument is necessary for correct interpretation of an oral message. The listener can distort the intended meaning by pre-judging the intentions of the speaker, inferring the final meaning of the message, or giving a diferent twist to the argument according to his or her own assumptions or by just picking out a few select shreds of information. These mental processes may act as a block to listening, affecting accurate exchange of information.

Abstracting

Abstracting is the mental process of evaluating thoughts in terms of the relative importance of ideas in the context of the total message. This is possible only by listening to the whole message. Abstracting acts as a barrier when a listener approaches a message from a particular point of view and focuses his or her attention on selected aspects of the conversation. This acts as a barrier to a full understanding of whatever is exchanged between two persons.

Slant

Slant is the biased presentation of a matter by the speaker. Instead of straight and honest communication, the speaker may adopt an oblique manner that could verge on telling a lie. When a matter is expressed with a particular slant, important aspects of the message are suppressed, left out, or only indirectly hinted at. Well-informed listeners usually do suspect the cover-up/slant. But, uninformed listeners may accept the slanted message.

Cognitive Dissonance

At times listeners fail to accept or respond to assumptions deriving from new information as they may be unprepared to change the basis of their beliefs and knowledge. In such a discrepancy between a listener's existing assumptions and the position communicated by the speaker, some listeners try to escape from the dissonance by reinterpreting, restructuring, or mentally ignoring the oral interchange. Cognitive dissonance interferes with the acceptance of new information. It may also lead to several interpretations of a new message or view. In the absence of cognitive dissonance, a listener has the skill, ability, and flexibility of rational thinking, promoting effective oral communication. For business executives, the skill to move from one mental frame to another is essential for efficient oral exchange of ideas, beliefs, and feelings.

INCULCATING LISTENING EFFICIENCY

Effective communication is associated with the power of speaking well, but without good listening, successful communication is not possible. The spoken word fulfils its purpose only when it is carefully heard, I understood, interpreted, and registered in the listener's memory.

The effectiveness of communication is the function of both Effective speaking and Effective listening. To communicate successfully, the speaker's words should be well articulated and, at the same time, they must be well received. The guidelines given here should be helpful in improving one's listening skills.

When two people are talking simultaneously, neither can listen to the other. To have a successful dialogue, it is necessary that when one person wants to speak, the other person keeps quiet and listens. No one can talk and listen at the same time. In classrooms, it is common for teachers to ask students to stop talking to ensure that they are able to listen to the lecture. Similarly, the teacher stops talking when a student wants to say something.

1. Speak less, listen more: The purpose of listening is to know what the speaker wants to say or to learn from the speaker. Listening is an act of cooperation in the sense that it takes advantage of others' knowledge and experience. Therefore, devoting time to listening rather than speaking is in our self-interest.
2. Do not be a sponge: It is not necessary to concentrate on every word of the speaker. Instead, it is more important to get the main point, theme, or central idea and concentrate on it. Minor details are not as important.
3. Observe body language: Effective listeners do not pay attention only to what is being said, but also notice how it is said. They observe the feelings, attitudes, and emotional reactions of the speaker based on his or her body language.
4. Focus on the speaker: Facing the speaker and making eye contact make the speaker feel that the listener is interested in what he or she is saying.
5. Separate the ideas from the speaker: Good listeners do not allow themselves to be overly awed by the speaker's status, fame, charm, or other physical and personal attributes. They separate the person from his or her ideas. Effective communicators are not conditioned by their personal impressions and prejudices, but are able to focus on the content of what is being spoken.
6. Listen for what is left unsaid: Careful attention to what is not said, in addition to what is said, can tell the listener a lot about the speaker's feelings and attitude towards the subject of discussion.
7. Avoid becoming emotional: Good listeners remain calm and do not become emotionally charged or excited by the speaker's words. Becoming too angry or excited makes it difficult for the listener to respond or express himself or herself objectively and rationally.
8. Do not jump to hasty conclusions: Listeners should allow the speaker to conclude his or her point. Only then should they try to interpret and respond to it. Hasty inferences may not represent what the speaker intended to communicate.
9. Empathize with the speaker: Effective listeners keep in mind the speaker's point of view by focusing on the big picture, background constraints/limitations, and special needs and the emotional state of the speaker.
10. Respect the speaker as a person: It is important to listen with respect for the other person. Do not allow the speaker to feel hurt, ignored, or insulted.

There may be nothing new in these guidelines. However, a reminder of the ways of improving listening, as illustrated in Exhibit 6.3, can be of great value for improving the effectiveness of communication.

Exhibit 6.3 Effective Listening—Six Steps Away

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE AND INEFFECTIVE LISTENERS

To improve our listening skills, we must know the characteristics of effective as well as ineffective listeners and identify our own weaknesses as listeners. Exhibit 6.4 contrasts the characteristics of effective and ineffective listeners.

Exhibit 6.4 Characteristics of Effective and InEffective Listeners

Good listeners try to encourage the speaker by their body language and expression. They indicate interest and understanding regarding the subject of discussion. Poor listeners, on the other hand, annoy and disturb the speaker. They may have the habit of interrupting or showing little interest in what is being discussed. Unnecessary interjections, such as “yes”, “but”, and “if” should be avoided when they disturb the speaker.

After knowing how effective and ineffective listeners differ in their listening behaviour, try to recognize your own behaviour and attitude.

REVIEW YOUR LEARNING

1. “Listening is hearing with thoughtful attention.” Discuss.
2. What is the advantage of being a good listener for a business executive?
3. Describe in detail the process of listening.
4. Describe some internal factors that act as barriers to proper listening.
5. “Premature evaluations and hurried conclusions distort listening.” Discuss.
6. Describe some methods of improving the listening ability of a person.
7. Explain how a reflective response facilitates listening.
8. Bring out the difference between “clarifying' listeners” and “interpretative” listeners.
9. What do you understand by the term “responsive listening”?

REFLECT ON YOUR LEARNING

1. Consider the reasons for one's occasional lack of concentration on what is said.
2. How would you evaluate yourself as a listener on the basis of the listening characteristics described in this chapter?
3. In this chapter, there are some guidelines given for improving listening. Which of these would you find suitable for improving your listening?
4. Do you believe that proper training can improve one's listening skills?
5. Do you agree with the view that it is not possible to have appropriate communication between a speaker and a listener?