Focus on ideas as well as on facts and definitions.  Giving another person your full attention requires a lot of effort and skill.  It is essential if you really want to communicate effectively.  

Learn to apply a variety of listening skills so that you can master receiving information.  This skill of listening will make your work and home life go more smoothly and efficiently, giving you more time to achieve success and to enjoy living.

Your goal is listening attentively.  

Strive to understand and remember what you are hearing.

Listening attentively enables you to ask good questions for clarification.  

Being open to learning, paying close attention to the speaker, being able to ask good questions, and to make useful comments are the foundation for attentive and active listening.  

In addition, attentive listeners have relational goals like creating goodwill… maintaining a positive impression, advancing relationships, and demonstrating caring.

Types of Listening

• Critical Listening
• Separate fact from opinion…
  when listening critically, your goal, in addition to understanding and remembering, is to evaluate (assess, interpret) what you are hearing.  Critical listening is related to asking questions.  Listening critically provides the basis for good probing questions. 

• Review and Preview as you listen: this involves anticipating where the speaker is going next, how the argument will be developed and what issues have been and/or should be covered.

• Determine the thesis or purpose of the communication, identifying the main points, and assessing the adequacy of the main points.

• Sympathetic Listening
• Don't talk – listen.
• Don't give advice – listen.
• Don't judge – listen.

In general, you probably should ask infrequent questions.  Try to ask open-ended questions, one at a time.  Beware of asking too many questions when your goal is being sympathetic and supportive.

• Creative Listening
• Keep and exercise an open mind.
• Supplement your ideas with another person's ideas and vice versa.
  Recognize differences (e.g. between facts and opinions).  Form opinions and supporting claims (determining what you think and why).  Put the ideas into a broader context (avoid tunnel vision and bias).

A few important skills to evolve include:

1. A posture of involvement is ability for inclining one’s posture toward the speaker, facing the speaker squarely, maintaining an open body position, and for positioning yourself an appropriate distance from the speaker
2. Appropriate motions (occasionally nodding your head, using facial expressions to reflect emotions back to the speaker, adjusting your body position in non-distracting ways, etc.)
3. Eye contact (sustained, direct, reflective eye contact)
4. Maintain a non-distractive environment: do as much as it takes to eliminate distracting noises, movements, etc.
5. Practice Win-Win communication… fosters understanding, affirmation, validation and appreciation.  Create an atmosphere of trust, honor and respect.

Eliminate Bias and Barriers

Automatically you may listen to only some of what another person says.  Practicing this method, what you’ll hear is your own opinions and views.  This selective filtering operates against any real understanding of another person's position.  Some other things that get in the way of accurate listening include:

• Rehearsing what you are going to say next
• Working to get your share of the talking time
• Trying to impress the other person
• Judging what the other person says as irrelevant, illogical, inconsistent, etc.

Case Study

Listening is a two-way street… to be effective communicators; we must all listen to each other.  One-way listening can be equated to driving down a one-way street the wrong way.  It's dangerous, it can get you into trouble and it can be expensive, as illustrated in the following example.

Sam, a dispatcher for a national moving company in Philadelphia, gave Mike, a new driver, an assignment to go to Portsmouth to make a household goods delivery. 

When Mike arrived in Portsmouth, he called Sam for further instructions. As Sam gave Mike the necessary information, Mike got a strange feeling that something wasn't quite right. 

Mike asked Sam for the complete address, which was Maple Street in Portsmouth, Virginia. Well, Mike was in Portsmouth, but it was Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Mike was ten hours away from where he was supposed to be. He had traveled north in the wrong direction. 

Not only did this cost the company time and money, but also the owner of the goods was not pleased. 

What caused this expensive mistake? Ineffective listening by both parties. In his haste, Mike didn't listen to all the information that Sam gave him, and Sam neglected to get accurate acknowledgment from Mike stating that he understood the instructions.

Active Listening

Maintain eye contact, an open relaxed posture, and friendly gesturing.  

When listening consider asking yourself:

What is the speaker’s basic thinking message?

What is the person’s basic feeling message?

For Example, listener X is able to make statements by summarizing the thinking and feeling messages of speaker S:

S: I just don’t understand, one minute she tells me to do this, and the next minute to do that.
X: She really confuses you.

S: I really think he is a very nice guy. He’s so thoughtful, sensitive, and kind. He calls me a lot. He’s fun to go out with.
X: You like him very much, then.

Being an active listener means participating fully in the communication process.  This means listening to everything the other person has to say.  It also means being sensitive to the signals of your own body.  You must realize the impact of your body language in the communication process.  Active listening involves paying attention to the non-verbal as well as verbal messages you send to the other person. It helps if your posture and behavior reflect your interest.

Watch someone who listens attentively. They make eye contact and focus on the other person while they listen. They listen with eyes as well as ears. While listening, they nod or make attentive noises from time-to-time.

Paraphrasing

Restate a message with fewer words to communicate the main point. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.  This echoing technique is useful in checking the accuracy of your understanding of the other person's viewpoint. It also signals to the other person that they should continue talking, which keeps you listening.

Purpose:

1.     To test your understanding of what you heard.

2.     To communicate that you are trying to understand what is being said. If you’re successful, paraphrasing indicates that you are following the speaker’s verbal explorations and that you’re beginning to understand the basic message.

Clarifying

Bring vague material into sharper focus.

Purpose:

To untangle unclear or incorrect interpretation
To get more information
To help the speaker see other points of view

To identify what was said:

I’m confused, let me try to sate what I think you were trying to say.
You’ve said so much, let me see if I’ve got it all.

Perception Checking

Request the verification of your perceptions.

Purpose:

1.     To give and receive feedback

2.     To check out your assumptions

Let me see if I’ve got it straight. You said that you love your children and that they are very important to you. At the same time you can’t stand being with them. Is that what you are saying?

Summarizing

Piece together, organize, and integrate the major aspects of a dialogue.  Pay attention to various themes and emotional overtones.  Put key ideas and feelings into broad statements.  DO NOT add new ideas.

Purpose:

• To give a sense of movement and accomplishment in the exchange

• To establish a basis for further discussion.

• Pull together major ideas, facts, and feelings

A number of good points have been made about rules for the classroom. Let’s take a few minutes to go over them and I’ll write them on the board.
We’ve been all over the map today.  The three major points of the lesson are…

Primary Empathy

Reflect on content and feelings.

Purpose:

1.   To show that you’re understanding the speaker’s experience

2.   To allow the speaker to evaluate his/her feelings after hearing them expressed by someone else

Basic Formula:

You feel (stating a feeling) because (stating content)

The main fear for you seems to be fear -- you’re really scared of losing your relationship if things don’t get better.

It’s upsetting when someone doesn’t let you tell your side of the story.

Advanced Empathy

Reflect on the content and feeling of a message at a deeper level. 

Purpose: To try to get an understanding of what may be deeper feelings

I get the sense that you are really angry about what was said, but I am wondering if you also feel a little hurt by it.

You said that you feel more confident about contacting employers, but I wonder if you also still feel a bit scared.

Get Active – Listen

Active listeners spend 70% of their time listening and 30% of their time talking.  If helpful, follow these steps of attentive listening:

• Squarely face the person

• Open your posture

• Lean slightly towards the sender

• Eye contact maintained

• Relax and be comfortable and attentive

• Avoid or ignore distractions and do not dwell on a fragment of a message

• Respond with “yes”, “go on” “that’s interesting, tell me more”

• Ask open-ended questions to expand on information exchange

• Do not let your biases prevent you from seeing other points of view.

Listening is a Crucial Skill

A good listener, both on the telephone and in person, will:

• Always be prepared to take notes when necessary. That means having writing tools readily available.
• Repeat the information he or she heard by saying, "I hear you saying ... Is that correct?" If the speaker does not agree, repeat the process to ensure understanding.
• Remain curious and ask questions to determine if he or she accurately understands the speaker.
• Want to listen to the information being delivered.
• Be physically and mentally present in the moment.
• Listen by using the ears to "hear" the message, the eyes to "read" body language (when listening in person), the mind to visualize the person speaking (when on the telephone), and intuition to determine what the speaker is actually saying.
• Establish rapport by "following the leader."
• Match the momentum, tone of voice, body language, and words used by the speaker.
• Please use common sense when matching. If the speaker is yelling, don't do the same because it will make a bad situation worse.

A poor listener, both on the telephone and in person:

• May be abrupt and/or give one-word answers such as "no," "yes," and "maybe."
• Will be easily distracted.
• In person, the listener may look around the room as opposed to focusing on the speaker's face.
• Over the telephone, the listener may be opening mail, reading e-mail, filing, playing with hair, a pencil or a tie -- anything that preempts focusing on the caller.
• Constantly interrupts, making the speaker feel that what he or she has to say is not important. 
• The listener finishes the other person's sentences, implying that the listener already knows what the speaker is about to say.
• Changes the subject without even realizing it.
• Looks at his watch, signaling that you are wasting his time.

Which person would you depend on to get important work completed?