Listening Skills

 Most of us have developed as business people in organizational

cultures that emphasize the persuasiveness of the speaker.

 We've spent countless hours, and a great deal of money, attending to

our appearance, business dress, body language, facial expression,
selection of language, tone of voice, charts, graphs, and on and on.
The importance of these factors is not denied.

 However, they're not the only factors influencing communication.

 And are they powerful enough, when we're trying to get the best from a
diverse group of people, build a customer-focused organization, or
influence those who disagree with us?
Why are we poor listeners?
• Listening training is unavailable

• We are inefficient listeners

Recent Study that shows average time
spent by a personnel on a workplace

Others
19% Listening
33%

Writing
22%
Speaking
26%
What does Listening Mean
• Art of hearing and understanding
• Making sense out of what we hear

• Look
• Identify
“The process of receiving, constructing
• Set-up meaning from, and responding to a
• Tune in spoken and/ or non-verbal message”

• Examine
• Note (International Reading Association)
 Selecting –
Choosing Stimuli

Hearing – Attending –
Receiving data Focusing Attention

Responding - Understanding –
Feedback Assigning Meaning

Evaluating –
Analyzing and
Judging

Listening Process
Why is Listening Important?
 Helps in taking instructions correctly without any errors
 Solve customer’s complaints more effectively
 From 95% of communication, 45% is of listening
 An essential management and leadership skill
 Good listening helps you to take better decisions and make better
policies in organization
 On the contrary lack of proper listening can lead to embarrassing
situations because of a gap in coordination and understanding
Types of Listening
• Informative
• Attentive
• Relationship
• Appreciative
• Critical
• Discriminative
Informative Listening
• Informative listening is the name we give to the
situation where the listener's primary concern is to
understand the message. Listeners are successful insofar
as the meaning they assign to messages is as close as
possible to that which the sender intended.
Attentive Listening
• Goal is to understand and remember what they are
hearing
▫ Attention Skills
▫ Following Skills
▫ Reflecting Skills
Relationship Listening
• Either to help an individual or to improve the
relationship between people.

• Therapeutic listening is a type of relationship

listening
Appreciative Listening
• Listening to music, to speakers because you like
their style
• The quality of appreciative listening depends
upon three factors
▫ Presentation
▫ Perception
▫ Previous experience
Critical Listening
• listening to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting
or rejecting it, as when we listen to the sales pitch of a
used-car dealer or the campaign speech of a political
candidate

• There are three things to keep in mind (Aristotle)

▫ Ethos – Speaker credibility
▫ Logos – Logical Argument
▫ Pathos – Psychological Appeal
Discriminative listening
• By being sensitive to the changes is the speaker’s rate,
volume, pitch and emphasis an informative listener can
detect even the slightest nuances

▫ Hearing ability
▫ Awareness of sound structure
▫ Integration of non- verbal cues
 Barriers to Listening
Distraction in your mind

Wandering attention

Planning a reply

Lack of interest
Being self centered

Avoiding what is difficult

Excessive note-taking

Emotional blocks