Listening and Responding

Responding With Empathy

The other half of listening is responding to others accurately and appropriately.

Responding Skills:

Improving your Listening Skills:

Responding with Empathy:

Empathy is the process of feeling of feeling what another person is feeling.

To become a better listener, consider theses three simple steps that may sound easy to do, but are challenging to put into practice:

To respond thoughtfully means to consider the needs of the other person.

Check the accuracy of your listening skills by reflecting your understanding of what your partner has said.

Stop, Look, and Listen.

Stop: To be mindful of the message and avoid focusing on your own distracting inner "talk," which may keep you from focusing on the messages of others.

• To listen with empathy is to understanding your partner's feelings:

Ask yourself how you would feel if you had experienced a similar situations or recall how you did feel under similar circumstances. Or recall how your partner felt under similar circumstances

To respond effectively:

Ex. Social decentering: Stepping away from your own thoughts and attempting to experience the thoughts of another.

Be Descriptive - Describe your own reactions to what your partner has said rather than pronouncing a quick judgment on his or her message is also more likely to keep communication flowing.

Look: To listen with your eyes - to focus on nonverbal information.

• Ask appropriate questions:

Seek additional information to better understand your partner's message

Listen: involves the skill of capturing the details of a message while also connecting those details to a major idea.

Be Timely - Feedback is usually most effective at the earliest opportunity after the behavior or message is presented. Waiting to provide a response after much time has passed causes confusion.

• Paraphrase message content:

Summarize for your partner the essence of the information, as you understand it.

Be Brief - Less information can be more. Counting down the amount of feedback can highlight the importance of what you do share.

• Paraphrase Emotions:

When appropriate, try to summarize what you think your partner may be feeling.

Be Useful- When you provide feedback to someone, be certain it is useful and relevant

Information-Processing Barriers:

• Procession Rate: Use the difference between speech rate and thought rate to mentally summarize the message

• Information Overload: Realize when you and your partner is tired or distracted and not ready to listen. Assess what is urgent and not urgent when listening

• Receiver Apprehension: Record the message to be sure you capture it review the audio later. Take notes. Make mental summaries of the information you hear

Listening Barriers:

• Shifting Attention: Make a conscious effort to remain focused on one message.

One day after hearing something, most people remember only about half of what was said. It gets worse. Two days later, our listening comprehension drops another 50%. The result: Two days after hearing a lecture or speech, most of us remember only about 25% of what we heard

• Cultural Differences: Acknowledge that some cultures place greater emphasis on the listener than on the speaker

Context Barriers:

Our listening deteriorates not only when we listen to speeches or lectures, but also when we interact interpersonally.

• Time can effect with your listening.
• If possible schedule difficult listening situations for when you're at your best.

What keeps us listening well? The most critical elements are:

• Environment can also effect your listening. Best listening occurs in an area with the fewest distractions. Eliminate distracting noise

• Are you a morning or evening person?

The importance of Listening and Responding Skills:

1. Self Barriers:

Personal habits that work against listening well.

2. Information-Processing Barriers:

The way we mentally manage information.

3. Context Barriers:

The surroundings in which we listen.

There are at least three reasons to think about your listening style and those of others:

Listening: Is the process we use to make sense out of what we hear; it is a complex process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages.

- Listening and responding skills are important for several reasons.

Some researchers suggest that because listening is the first communication skill we learn, it is the most important.

- Listening is very vital as we develop relationships with others, collaborate, and listen to lectures and speeches.

To successfully listen you have to diagnose where you sometimes get off track. This will help you figure out how to increase your listening skill.

- Your skill as a listener has important implications for the relationships you establish with others.

1. To enhance your self-awareness.

• Understanding your preferred listening style can help you become more aware of how you behave in communication situations.
• Your background may influence your listening style. Some researchers suggests that women are more likely to be relational listeners, whereas men have a tendency to assume one of the other listening styles.
• Your cultural traditions may have a major influence on your particular listening style. People from a more individualistic, self-focused cultural respective (such as people from the United States) tend to be more action- oriented listeners than people from other places.

Have you ever heard a presentation or watch a speech and at the end you have no idea what they just said?

You've heard everything, but you didn't listen.

Did you know that Hearing and Listening are different?

Hearing: Is the physiological process of decoding sounds. You hear when sound waves have reached your eardrum and cause the bones of the middle ear to vibrate. Eventually, the sound vibrations are translated into

electrical impulses that reach your brain.

Rather than focusing only on what to say, a person skilled in the art of conversation listens and picks up on interests and themes of others.

Listening and Responding

Listening well can have benefits:

• People who are perceived to be good listeners enjoy greater success in their jobs than those who are perceived as poor listeners.

• One research study found that a key difference between couples who remain married and those who divorce is the ability to listen to each other.

"Listening, not imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery."

-Dr. Joyce Brothers

2. To adapt your own listening style to different situations.

• Knowing your own listening style can help you adapt and adjust your listening style to fit the listening situation.
• If, for example, you are relational-oriented listener and you're listening to a message that has little information about people but lots of technical details, you will have to work harder than other types of listeners to stay tuned into the message.

3. To communicate more effectively.

• It can be useful to be aware of others' listening style so that you can communicate messages that others are more likely to listen to.
• If you know that your spouse is an analytical listener, you should communicate a message that is rich in information because that's what your spouse prefers.

It may be difficult to determine someone's listening style, especially if you don't know the person very well. But it is worth the time, as well as easier, to consider the listening styles of people you do know well.

Self Barriers:

A. Self Focus:

How We Listen:

What can you do to regain your listening focus if you are focused on yourself rather than on the other person's message?

• Become aware of the problem. Become consciously competent. Notice when you find yourself drifting off rather than concentrating on the speaker.
• Concentrate; if your head is telling you that the message is boring, useless, or stupid make sure you don't mindlessly tune the message out.
• Be active rather than passive. Taking notes when appropriate and providing nonverbal and even sometimes verbal feedback to the speaker can help you keep your focus on the speaker rather than on you.

B. Emotional Noise:

What we see and hear affects our emotions

Listening Styles:

Your listening style is your preferred way of making sense out of the messages you hear and see.

• Emotional noise happens when our emotions interferes with communication effectiveness. Certain words or phrases can cause emotions very quickly, and, of course, the same word may create different emotions in different people.

C. Criticism:

Types of Listeners:

• We usually associate the word criticism with negative judgments and attitudes. Although critiquing a message can provide a positive as well as negative insights, must of us don't like to be criticized.

To listen involves five activities:

1. Selecting:

- to focus on one sound as you sort through various sounds competing for your attention.

2. Attending:

- to maintain a sustained focus on a particular message.

3. Understanding

- to assign meaning to messages.

4. Remembering and to confirm that listening had occurred.

- to recall info

5. You Responding

- to confirm understanding of a message

• Relational listeners: Those who prefer to focus on the emotions and feelings communicated by others verbally and non-verbally. They tend to be more sympathetic than other types of listeners.

• Critical listeners: Those who prefer to listen for the facts and evidence to support key ideas and an underlying logic; they also listen for errors, inconsistencies, and discrepancies. They tend to be a bit more skeptical and critical. They are known to question any assumptions underlying a message, or in other words "second guess."

• Analytical Listeners: Those who withhold judgment, listen to all sides of an issue, and wait until they hear the facts before reaching a conclusion.

• Task-Oriented Listeners: Those who look at the overall structure of the message to see what action needs to be taken; they also like efficient, clear, and briefer messages.