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Listening is an important component of the entire process of communication. If listening is excluded from communication, the communication becomes a wastage of time. Listening may be defined as the perception or actual understanding of whatever has been communicated.
According to Floyd J. James, “Less listening capacity is a main source of origin of the problems related with the work at every level.”
In a communication process, listening and reading are the activities of the receiver, so he must take the responsibility of decoding with more care. On the other hand, responsibility of careful encoding resets with the sender.
In an American company when a survey was conducted on how members spent their time communicating, they were surprised to discover that 63% of their time was taken up listening to one another while reading took 4%, writing 11% and speaking 22%. It is undoubtable that if people are bad listerness, they will also make bad communicators.
Writing 9%
Reading 16%
Speaking 30%
Listening 45%
This way, any oral communication can only be said fruitful if it is listened effectively. The Listening process comprises two stages:
1. Encoding and Transmission of message by the sender; and
2. Decoding and providing the required feedbacks by the receiver.
Without completing this process, the listening cannot be said executed. Most of the miscommunication are basically due to incomplete listening or ineffective listening.
Listening is more than hearing. In a class room teacher never says “hear”. He/She says “listen students.” It simply denotes that listening comprises hearing and understanding.
When someone says “Listen the music”. We close our eyes and concentrate towards the coming sounds and voice. And, another important point about listening is that it comes with the practice. When we carefully and deeply hear a communication, it turned into listening.
The following advantages of listening can be easily listed :
1. Listening helps to know the organization : Listening, especially listening to the grapevine will enable you to know what the members of the staff think of company’s policies and activities. Hence it will help you understand your organization better.
2. Listening helps to make better policies : If you listen to your subordinates carefully, you will know which policies are suitable for your organization. You will not keep stumbling form one top-heavy policy to another. You will chalk out the policies which are acceptable to other members and which will win their willing support.
3. Listening mollifies the complaining employees : Very often employees have certain grievances which exist more in their mind that in reality, i.e., which are primarily psychological. If you listen to them patiently and sympathetically, their anger will subside and they will leave mollified.
4. Listening is important for the success of the open-door policy : Many managers take pride in the fact that they believe in the open-door policy, i.e., they always keep their door open for the employees to walk into their room and talk to them. No doubt, their door is always open, but they are themselves bad listeners. So, their employees are inhibited to talk freely. The result is a total failure of upward communication. But if you, as manager, listen sympathetically, your employees will be encouraged to talk and there will be free upward communication.
5. Listening helps to spot sensitive areas before they become explosive : in an engineering firm, the management decided to meet the workers’ union regularly whether or not there were any problems to sort out. The result was that they began to listen to each other well for the first time. They were able to spot sensitive areas and find out solutions before they became explosive and many other problems which could have led to serious, disputes just did not arise.
Effective listening contains the following points :
1. Concentrate on what a person is saying rather than on how he looks. Don’t be distracted by his physical appearance or his mannerism.
2. Repeat the key ideas to yourself. Particularly, while listening to a along lecture see if you can repeat to yourself all the important ideas the speaker has put before you. This will also help you to understand the lecture better.
3. Try to relate the speaker’s remarks to your personal background and experience. This will also enable you to retain those remarks in your memory longer.
4. Do not let your mind wander away from what the speaker is saying. Do not think of the pleasant for unpleasant experiences of your own. Be determined that you are going to shut everything out of your mind except the speaker’s words.
Following are the main principles of effective listening :
1. Clarity : Clarity is required for effective communication because the message will not be impressive in absence of clarity. Clarity is also of different types :
a. Clarity in thought:
The person sending the message should be clear about his thoughts. He should know :
i. Why is the message being sent?
ii. What is the message ?
iii. To whom is the message being given ?
iv. How is the message being sent ?
b. Clarity in expressing:
In communication all those words should be included which increase clarity of the thought. If any codes are being used then they should be easily understandable. The following things should be kept in mind:
i. Words used in the message should be simple.
ii. Definite words make communication effective.
2. Use of right form of the words :
The words used in the message should be used in the right form :
For example : ‘it is the responsibility of every citizen to safeguard national property’
Instead of the above sentence the following sentence will be more effective.
‘it is the duty of every citizen to protect national property.’
3. Conciseness : Conciseness in communication means that the message should be delivered unchanged. For this the selection of words should be appropriate and unnecessary words should be avoided.
The message should be so that it says more in less words :
I have followed it followed
After studying it is clear Cleared
When the receiver of the message describes the message then he should have complete knowledge of the signs, diagrams and words used in the message. Any wrong information or lack of knowledge can affect the understanding of the message. The unnecessary details should be left out of the message because they may create confusion in understanding the message.
4. Considerations: Before sending the message the person sending the message should remember that the message is easy to understand. The message should be in a formal manner. Use of the words “We” and “you” instead of “I” make the message more effective. The message should not be personal but it should be general i.e., it should not cover your own benefits but benefits for the organization.
5. Correctness: For effective Communication the language used in the message should be grammatically correct. The language can be formal as well as informal and should be used as per the situation. Language should be simple and practical. The message should be in correct sentences.
6. Courtesy: Showing courtesy to others leaves a good impression on others. Courtesy is the basic principle of effective communication.
7. Concreteness: The information used as given in the message should be concrete. Unrealizable information should not be used in the message because this mostly leads to wrong decisions.
If the facts and information given in the message are concrete then we can do a comparative study based on these facts.
In order to make communication specialized the following points should be remembered :
a. Special facts should be included in the message.
b. The available data must be included in the message.
c. The conclusion should be drawn only after a proper comparison of the information available.
d. The message should be clear it can be sent only when it is encoded.
e. Special facts make the message more effective.
f. Facts given in the message make it more reliable.
g. Comparison of information makes conclusions more definite.
The process of listening starts with receiving the message and ends with understanding and reacting to the message. It can be explained through the following diagram:
Main elements of good listening are as follows :
1. Positive Attitude: Every Person can not be a good listener. For good and effective listening, positive attitude is required. If listener shows negative attitude than the objective of listening is not fulfilled.
2. Ability to concentrate : A good listener must have the ability to concentrate. Human mind has a wonderful quality of thinking and understanding in more than one direction simultaneously and, therefore, concentration is required. In any person, capacity to speak is about 180 to 250 words per minute, whereas listening capacity in about 400 to 600 words per minute. A slight diversion in communication on the part of either the sender or receiver in communication on the part of either the sender or receiver will create confusion. Such a situation is known as ‘Miscommunication’. If listener is disciplined and concentrates properly, miscommunication can be minimized.
3. Enter into question-answer session: When listener is losing his concentration, it is better to start question-answer session. Listener asks questions, and the speaker looks at him and gives answer. If the speaker keeps an eye on the listeners than to loose concentration is not easy and his mind can not divert to other things.
4. Conductive body postures: Body-language helps in communication while listening. While sitting in chair and taking rest on the high back or to sit in the seat of the chair shows that the listener wants to keep away from the speaker.
According to Thrill and Brovee there are four types of listening:
1. Active Listening : means the capacity of listeners to give opinion on the message, along with disturbed state of mind with conflicting ideas.
2. Critical Listening : means the capacity to evaluate the message.
3. Content Listening : means the capacity to understand and to preserve the message.
4. Emphatic Listening : means the capacity to convey the message to others.
5. Attentive Listening : In this type of listening, each and every word of speaker is listened and understood with full concentration of mind and by heart.
6. Pretended Listening : In this type of listening through the facial gestures, it is shown as if communicated message is listened. In fact, the listening is absent, only the message is heard.
7. Instructive Listening: in this type of listening the message is understood with natural ease along with similar thoughts coming in mind. Such a situation helps in understanding the message with its real and complete meaning.
8. Selective Listening: In this type of listening only the necessary part of the message is listened and the unnecessary part is ignored.
One may question the very need of learning listening comprehension. Is it really required that one should learn it? The answer to this question will be ‘yes’. One has to learn listening communication today more than ever before.
As we know, a major part of business activity consists of communication. We not only talk to others but also respond to what others have to say. This responding to someone’s oral communication can be of two kinds:
1. Passive Listening
2. Active Listening
When we hear one’s speech rather listlessly or indifferently, it is passive listening. We seem to be playing our role in communicating per force. It hardly needs to be said that this kind of listening makes a poor impression on the speaker. Not only that he does not feel encouraged to continue that but also he may hold back something which might have been useful to the listener. Passive listening is against the etiquette of communication, and it is not desirable in professional life.
Active listening, on the contrary, is an expression of one’s genuine interest in what the speaker is saying. It is a proof of the fact that the attention is being paid. Active listening naturally encourages the speaker to continue. This impression can be produced with the right responses at the right moment. For example, the listener may convey his appreciation with a nod or a smile, and his concern with a suggestive frowning.
Even when the listener is not present before the speaker and cannot see him, that is, the conversation is going on a telephone, he can convey his responsiveness with the help of such expression as ‘hmm’, ‘oh’, ‘yes’, ‘really’…. Thus active listening makes the listener a more attractive and desirable partner in communication.
The above discussion makes it clear that communication is more fruitful when the listener is active, that is, he makes the right kind of responses. But what was the ‘right’ kind of responses?
Let us imagine a very active listener, responding to the speaker with great zeal but one fourth of his responses consist of such interruptions as “Pardon?” The inability of the listener to understand what the speaker is saying mars the beauty of communication, if its frequency is a result, not of any external disturbance, but of his own poor comprehension. So, listening must not only be active but also comprehension.
Listening comprehension may not be a problem to some people, who have been listening to a language for a very long time. But some persons may be so good in their capacity of comprehend the spoken word. It is more so in case of a man listening to foreign language to which he has not been so similar. For example, Indian often find it difficult to comprehend the English spoken by an Englishman. Therefore, the learning of listening comprehension becomes important. It is a skill that can be cultivated, and must be cultivated.
There are many hurdles in the path of effective listening which affect it. These are as under:
1. If the communication is a long one it makes the listener difficult to get it. A long message makes it difficult for the listener to understand it.
2. If there is uncalled for bias in the mind of the sender of the message, it increases the difficulty of the listener. The communication in such a case is not effective as the sender’s bias makes him exert unnecessarily on things uncalled for.
3. The difference in the attitude of both the sender and the receiver also hampers the process of effective listening.
4. The speed of communication also matters a lot. If the message is delivered at a fast speed, it makes it difficult for the listener to get to the right one.
5. Cultural and linguistic diversity also play an important role in making listening effective. If the sender and receiver have different cultural back-grounds and speak different languages, there can be no effective listening.
6. If some sort of training is required, both parties must go in for it. Lack of proper training makes effective listening difficult.
In this process the person who gives the message and the person who receives the message sit fact to face. The exchange of information in this process is done verbally. Verbal communication includes face to face dialogues, telephone talk, ground discussions, meetings and seminars. This method has been used by managers from ancient times to convey their message to their workers. This method avoids encouraging re-tapism and is also easy to revise.
Oral listening can be made more effective by adopting following methods:
1. Unnecessary dialogue should be avoided.
2. Peaceful atmosphere should be provided.
3. If any problem arises, it should be removed at the earliest.
4. Argumentation should be done peacefully.
5. First the environment should be made conductive and then question answers should be done.
For written communication newspapers, magazines, bulletins, suggestion books, reports, diaries, handbooks and pamphlets etc. are used. The managers should take all precaution while giving written messages. The language of written message should be simple and clear. Because complex language can create confusions and thus lead to arguments. The message should be brief, concise and to the point but that doesn’t mean that any necessary information should be left out. The message should be brief, complete and arranged. Charts, graphs and diagrams and should be used to make the message clear.
Written listening is affected by many factors like takes more time and is an expensive process. The process lacks secrecy.
To make it more effective the message should be complete and its impact should be studied. The message should be brief and unnecessary expenses should be avoided.
In this method of communication such means are as used give information on seeing them. In video communication the following means are important : facial expressions and signs, exhibit, charts, photography, posters, organizational posters, notice boards, micro films and films etc. understanding is an art in which thoughts and expressions are studied through signs. We are all familiar with the danger signs (.). Thus use of these signs and symbols is very easy for communicating.
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