4 Chapter 4: Listening Effectively

Victoria Leonard, College of the Canyons

Adapted by Katharine O’Connor, Ph.D., Florida SouthWestern State College

Figure 4.1: Listening ¹

Introduction

I remember sitting in a biology class in college. The professor was lecturing about genetics, and I was paying attention because I found the topic very interesting. The student next to me was reading a novel and the professor appeared to key in on this. At one point the professor asked the student “Why are genes important?” Her response was, “Because they are more comfortable.” I think you can see that not listening can impact your credibility as well as your ability to succeed in school!

Understanding Listening

Listening may seem like a natural skill, but there is much more to this communicative act than appears on the surface. To help you improve your listening skills, it requires that you have a better understanding of why listening is so important and what is involved in the listening process.

The Importance of Listening

One of the most challenging areas of communication is listening. As communicators, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to say and the best way to say it and not enough time listening. We may spend as much as 70 – 80% of our day in some type of communicative act, and research specifically shows that adults spend about 45 – 55 percent of their day listening (Hargie, 2021). Whether you are listening in class, at work, or to friends, this form of communication takes up much of our day. Listening allows us to learn new information, connect with others, and learn about ourselves. But we are not born with this skill. As you read this chapter you will gain insight into the complexities of the listening process and be able to identify your listening styles and challenges. Becoming a better listener will allow you to become a more productive student, a better relational partner, and a more successful professional.

The Listening Process

Hearing is the physiological process of taking in sound. Whether you hear a thunderstorm or music, when sound waves hit your ears, your brain enables you to make sense of what you heard. Listening is an active process where we make sense of, interpret, and respond to, the messages we receive. Listening requires mindfulness. Mindfulness means being present, in the moment, and focusing on whatever verbal and nonverbal communication you are encountering. Think of mindfulness as being the center of the listening process.

Stages of the Listening Process

As we go through the six stages of listening, keep in mind that mindfulness should be at the heart of each stage. The steps of the listening process include receiving, attending, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages.

Receiving

In chapter one, you learned about how messages are received. Receiving is taking in information using both auditory and visual channels. Hearing is one of our senses and sound is one of the channels that allow you to receive messages. Visual cues are also important because sight can influence how you receive a message. Therefore, before you get to any other stage in the listening process, you must receive stimuli. As we listen to someone speak, we may miss how important these channels are, but they influence how we interpret messages.

Attending

Attending in listening means filtering out what is salient; that is, noticeable or important. We often attend to stimuli that are visually and/or audibly stimulating. For example, if you hear a new song on Spotify, the tune might be so great that you stop to do a Google search to find the lyrics. Or, when your social media feed shows the latest music video by your favorite musician, you will focus on that and tune everything else out. We also attend to stimuli that appeal to our needs or interests. In class, you might find yourself starting to tune out until your instructor says the word exam. At this point, you might tune back in because the professor is about to cover important information that can impact your grade. The content is salient as it meets a need that is important to you.

Figure 4.2: Disabled and Here²

Interpreting

The next stage in the listening process is interpreting which is combining visual and auditory cues to make sense and attribute meaning to what we hear. It is how we understand a message. We base our interpretations on our previous understanding of phenomena in our world. We observe nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice, facial expression, or eye contact to be able to interpret a message correctly. For example, once when I was teaching class, I heard a student “sigh” loudly. Was it because she was bored? To decide, I looked at her face to see if I understood the auditory cue because although a sigh may be about boredom, it could also be her sadness from a recent break-up. I then studied her face, and my perception was that she looked sad. If I had only heard the sigh without the visual cue, I would not have been able to interpret her message clearly at all.

Recalling

Recalling is the ability to remember what you hear. Recalling information is difficult for many people and this is impacted by where our memories are stored. According to Hargie (2010), we forget about 50% of what we hear immediately after hearing it. After eight hours, we recall about 35% and can recall about 20% after an entire day. Recall is important so that you can retrieve information that you have stored in your memory. If you are asked to critique a speaker, you will need to have listened well enough to recall what was said.

Evaluating

Evaluating is the process of listening where one assesses the validity and credibility of the message. Whether we are listening to the news, a professor, or a student speech, we are judging the speaker’s comments. It is important that critical thinking is used in judging what you hear as you need to listen to the use of language. No one comes to any communicative event without some form of bias. Whether you are listening to a speech about COVID-19 or immigration, you will find that you immediately begin to break down the message and compare it to what you believe to be true.

To evaluate a message thoroughly and fairly, it is important to ask yourself some important questions:

• What do I know about this topic?
• What do I know about the person speaking?
• Did this person support what they said with examples, or evidence if needed?

Humans tend to judge others before a message has been conveyed, so we owe it to ourselves to be as open as we can to what we are hearing and go through a critical process of analyzing the message before responding.

Responding

The last stage in the listening process is responding, which is sending verbal and nonverbal feedback to a message. We know from our earlier discussion of the communication process that feedback does not necessarily reflect that a message was understood. As communicators, we may provide back-channel cues, which are verbal or nonverbal forms of feedback that indicate we are listening. Some back-channel cues are nodding heads, strong eye contact, or leaning toward a speaker. If someone responds to a speaker by looking away, using their phone, or shifting in their seat, we could interpret those responses to mean they aren’t listening. Both verbal and nonverbal response cues do not always represent authentic listening, and therefore we will be examining listening challenges and ways to improve in this chapter.

Functions of Listening

I’m sure you have noticed when you are watching a movie, or listening to music, that you are engaged differently than when you are listening to a speech. There is value in understanding that there are different functions of listening because we can then use the most appropriate listening skills to meet the purpose or occasion. Using these functions appropriately will lead to better engagement and understanding. This is a major part of the communication process.

Comprehensive Listening

Comprehensive listening is the type of listening we engage in with the goal of understanding information. We all listen to messages throughout the day that require us to engage in comprehensive listening. This function of listening is what you would access if you were listening to a speech or lecture in class, or an employer giving you instructions on how to learn to use the cash register system. Depending on the context you are in, you may find that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to repeat what they told you if you were not listening. Listening well is important to your understanding of the message when it is first delivered.

Evaluative Listening

Figure 4.3: Vice Presidential Debate³

You already learned that evaluating is part of the listening process. It is also a function that fulfills the goal of analysis and evaluation of messages. We engage in evaluative listening in many of the same contexts we engage in comprehensive listening. However, evaluative listening allows us to assess the credibility of the speaker and/or message, the types of persuasive messages that are being sent, and any fallacies, or faulty logic, that the message contains. These messages come from a host of different sources such as your professors, peers, news outlets, religious leaders, and social media, to name a few. According to writer Jon Simpson, we are exposed to approximately 4,000 – 10,000 ads per day (Simpson, 2017). If you have ever clicked on a link through social media to listen to a sales pitch, you need to assess whether there is truth to what you are hearing. Evaluative listening may also be a matter of life or death. Jurors being asked to decide on a murder conviction, or a physician listening to someone’s list of symptoms, are both examples of how critical this kind of listening is.

Discriminative Listening

Figure 4.4: Herbert Doyle⁴

Discriminative listening is a unique function of listening that occurs during the receiving stage of the listening process and involves the ability to discern sounds. This form of listening is physiological, and if you can hear, then you can access this function of listening. For example, an automotive mechanic may be quite skilled at listening to the sounds of a car that someone brings in to be repaired. I would not be able to distinguish one sound from another, but the mechanic would easily be able to say, “It’s your carburetor!” My son and husband are both musicians, and I played piano for all of my childhood. They can discern certain sounds that a guitar or bass might make as I stare at them blankly. In listening to a speech, you may or may not use this function of listening. However, you may be able to distinguish a speaker’s passion for the topic, or the truth of their message, through the variations of vocal quality that occur during a speech.

Appreciative Listening

Figure 4.5: Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett at the North Sea Jazz Festival⁵

Appreciative listening is our ability to listen for enjoyment and is considered the easiest of all listening functions. Listening to music, watching a television show, attending a concert, or even listening to a great speech or classroom lecture are examples of appreciative listening. There are times when we are listening purely for enjoyment, but there are also occasions when we might combine listening functions. If you consider the example of a great classroom lecture by your professor, you might be listening for comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation all at the same time!

Empathetic Listening

Figure 4.6: Listening Attentively⁶

Empathetic listening is trying to understand another person’s feelings and/or emotions to validate them. It occurs when we try to feel what another person is feeling and can be considered the most challenging of all listening functions. It is important to distinguish sympathy from empathy. Sympathy is “feeling for” someone, while empathy is “feeling with” another person. It has often been described as putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is not always easy to do when listening to a classmate’s speech, however, the audience should strive to listen empathetically to support the speaker. The speaker should be able to see and feel the audience’s empathy through their back-channel cues. As we examine ineffective listening practices later in this chapter, you will develop even a greater appreciation for the importance of this listening function.

Listening Styles

Now that we have a better understanding of the importance of listening, the stages, and its functions, let’s learn about four different listening styles. A listening style is “a set of attitudes and beliefs about listening” (Floyd, 1985, p. 136). Researchers Watson et al. (1995) identified four distinct listening styles:

• People-Oriented
• Action-Oriented
• Content-Oriented
• Time-Oriented

Why is it important to know your listening style? People do tend to have a dominant listening style. Most research indicates that people will use at least two different listening styles but are not comfortable using all four styles. Adapting your listening style, or at least understanding what your style is, can help you become a better and more patient listener when you are listening to a speech or a professor.

People-Oriented

If you are a people-oriented listener you can tune into people’s emotions, feelings, and moods (Bodie and Worthington, 2010). People-oriented listeners will relate to a speaker’s tone of voice, and overall emotional tone. If you are a people-oriented listener, you will cue in on the emotion that is conveyed during a speech, much like an empathetic listener does.

Action-Oriented

Action-oriented listeners value clear, organized, and error-free messages. If you are an action-oriented listener watching a presentation, you will most likely notice errors and inconsistencies throughout the speech. An action-oriented listening style is common when receiving instructions. If you are an action-oriented listener, you might think, “What are the directions? What do I need to do first?”

Content-Oriented

Content-oriented listeners prefer technical information which is complex and challenging. This type of listener processes all of the information before forming any sort of judgment. An example of a content-oriented listener would be someone who enjoys listening to presidential debates because it provides an opportunity to contextualize their political views. Common professions for the content-oriented listener are politicians, judges, and academics, particularly those in the humanities, social sciences, and science.

Time-Oriented

When you are communicating with someone and you want the person to get to the point of their story quickly, you may be a time-oriented listener. This means you are extremely conscious of your use of time. If you are a time-oriented listener, you might even avoid eye contact, engage in nonverbal behaviors, or interrupt to move the conversation along and end it promptly. For example, medical professionals tend to be time-oriented listeners. If you had to go to the emergency room and see a doctor, the doctor wants you to get to the point of the matter so they can do a proper diagnosis quickly before moving on to the next patient.

Now that you have a better understanding of listening styles, you should be able to identify your primary style. You should also make sure to adapt your style to your audience. Listening takes a lot of work! The next aspect of listening we want you to explore is listening barriers because these can impact the way in which you absorb the information you hear.

Listening Barriers

Figure 4.7: Listening Distractions⁷

A listening barrier is anything that physically or psychologically hinders you from recognizing, understanding, and accurately interpreting the message that you are receiving. Five different barriers to effective listening include:

• Information overload
• Internal distractions
• Outside distractions
• Prejudice
• Rate of speech and thought speed

When you have a better understanding of the potential barriers to effective listening you can identify your weaknesses and work on improving them to make you a better listener.

Information Overload

We now know that a majority of our time communicating is spent listening and with all we have to listen to, there are going to be times when we experience information overload. Information overload is when you have so much information coming at you (for example, tons of statistics), that it’s easy to become overwhelmed. In a public speaking class, you can experience this when listening to your classmates give speeches– especially if you’re hearing 20 speeches one after the other. You may become overwhelmed and tune out. That’s information overload.

Internal Distractions

Most people have a lot going on in their lives. You attend school, you probably work, you might be raising a family, and you have your issues to work through every day. Sometimes when we are absorbed in our thoughts and concerns, we can’t focus on what someone else is saying. We have all experienced moments of being physically present, but mentally absent. Your ability to listen may be impacted by psychological or physiological noise. Psychological noise is a form of internal interference or distraction caused by your thought process. This form of internal noise includes thinking about all that you have to get done, paying your bills, or the argument you had with your partner, daydreaming, and other types of thoughts that take you away from listening mindfully. Physiological noise occurs when there is a physical condition that prevents you from attending to a message. If you have ever been ill, hungry, or fatigued while trying to listen to a lecture, a presentation, talking with a friend, or even while watching television, you may find that physiological noise is the culprit.

External Distractions

There are so many possible outside distractions that prevent us from fully showing up as a listener. Physical noise is a form of external noise created outside of the situation that can interfere with your ability to attend to messages. If you are seated next to students that are engaged in side conversations during class, your ability to focus on a message would be severely hampered. A common outside distraction is technology. If you’ve ever been with a friend while they are on their phone, you will understand how this would make it impossible for your message to be received. If a speaker looks out at an audience who is distracted by technology, the ability to listen is lost and a speaker will feel disrespected.

Prejudging

Sometimes you might have a hard time listening because you do not agree with the speaker. As humans, we tend to be closed-minded at times. If you have an emotional reaction to a person or you disagree with their ideas on a personal level, you might be allowing personal prejudices to distract you. Keep an open mind. While you may not agree with the person, you may learn more about them or the topic they are sharing. You’ll never know unless you hear them out.

Rate of Speech and Thought Speed

Most people speak at a rate of 125 words per minute. As a listener, you can filter 700 words a minute. If we can process so many more words than we hear, a mental lag can occur. Eventually, you’ll stop listening or you’ll find yourself drifting in and out. It might be to your benefit to mentally summarize the speaker’s ideas from time to time to keep yourself engaged.

Forms of Ineffective Listening

As we learned in the previous section, some of our barriers to effective listening may be more difficult to overcome or control. We have all developed some undesirable listening habits that can be changed with hard work. Being aware or conscious of the habits we have is the first step to improving how we listen. These ineffective listening practices include:

• Pseudolistening
• Selective listening
• Aggressive listening
• Insensitive listening

Pseudolistening

Figure 4.8: Sleeping⁸

If you’ve ever listened to a professor while nodding your head politely while your mind was a million miles away, then you have engaged in pseudolistening. Of course, you’re all such wonderful students, this has never happened. But just in case, let’s learn about pseudolistening, which is behaving as if you are listening and paying attention to who is speaking when you are not listening. As children, we learned that by looking at a speaker and providing nonverbal cues or back-channel cues, we might be able to get through an entire class without the teacher calling on us. Imagine if your professor was engaging in this listening pitfall while grading your speech! The consequences would be devastating for you.

Selective Listening

Figure 4.9: Selective Listening⁹

If you have ever noticed yourself only listening to the points someone makes that are important to you, that impact you, or that you agree with, you might be engaging in selective listening. Listening to classroom speeches, political discussions, or political figures are prime examples of where selective listening occurs. You will take in the parts of the discussion that you agree with and filter out the rest. As anecdotal evidence of this, I engaged my students in an open discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic. After we discussed what we had all “heard” about the pandemic, I generated a list of 20 statements to share with students during a Zoom class. These statements included examples such as “COVID-19 began in a Chinese open market,” “The COVID-19 virus can spread in hot and humid climates,” “People of all ages can be infected by the COVID-19 virus,” and “COVID-19 cannot be spread unless you are within six feet of an infected person.” Not all of these statements are true, but what happened in class next demonstrated how selective listening can occur. Many students admitted that when they listened to news sources, or even family members talk about the virus, they only “tuned in” when the statements agreed with their point of view. Throughout college, you will be exposed to many different ideas and philosophies, some of which you will disagree with. If you listen selectively, you will miss a lot of important information.

Aggressive Listening

Figure 4.10: Aggressive Listening¹⁰

Aggressive listening, also referred to as ambushing, is a pitfall of listening where individuals listen specifically so that they can attack back. It is likened to “lying in wait” so you can pounce. People who engage in aggressive listening are prone to attack someone based on their ideas, personality, or other factors that give them a reason to attack. One can see aggressive listening in politics continually. One candidate may attack their opponent after a point they make. Understanding this type of pitfall is important because it prevents you from being an active listener. If you are listening to a classroom speech that you do not agree with, you may stop listening in order to frame counterarguments in your mind.

Insensitive Listening

Figure 4.11: Insensitive Listening¹¹

If you recall the definition of empathic listening, you will find that insensitive listening is the opposite. Often referred to as “literal listening,” insensitive listening focuses only on the words, not the deeper meaning. Insensitive listeners do not explore the nonverbal cues that accompany the message. Imagine if your friend did not pass an exam, and then tells you. Rather than asking questions, or providing an empathetic response, your response is “I guess you didn’t study” or “Yeah, school can be hard.” Neither response will allow your friend to feel good about the exchange. In this example, the listener did not pay attention to the speaker’s tone of voice, or the sadness in their eyes. During a speech, you can demonstrate insensitive listening by doing other things during the speech, not looking at the speaker, rolling your eyes, or not providing any type of back-channel cues.

These are easy bad habits that we need to break to be effective communicators. Thus, we will now examine ways to become a better listener any time we are communicating.

Becoming a Better Listener

Like anything you may try to do in life, whether it’s study more, exercise, or eat healthier, none of that can happen without time and effort. As you read the next section on active listening, keep in mind that these principles can be applied to any communication context, not just public speaking!

Figure 4.12: Active Listening¹²

Active Listening

Although listening is an essential part of communication, it is often the weakest link in the communication process. People usually love to be heard but tend not to be as excited about listening. Active listening is when you are present and fully engaged as a listener, not just hearing the words. The ability to improve your listening skills will help you throughout your education, your professional life, and your relationships. Active listening requires focus and attention, and it takes concentration and effort. The principles of active listening are not hard to understand, but they require practice to use them effectively.

Principles of Active Listening

Figure 4.13: Active Listening¹³

Active listening should accomplish two things: making sure you fully understand the message and conveying to a speaker that you are actually listening. Listening in a classroom or to a speech can be challenging because you are limited by how, and how much, you can interact with the speaker during the class.

The following strategies help make listening more effective and learning more fun:

• Get your mind in the right space. Prepare yourself mentally to receive the information the speaker is presenting. Clear your mind and keep quiet.

• Get your body in the right space. Sit toward the front of the room (or lean into your camera if online) where you can make eye contact easily, and limit distractions.

• Focus on what is being said. Listen for new ideas. Turn off your cell phone and pack it away. If you are using your laptop for notes, close all applications except the one that you use to take notes.

• Take notes. By writing down key points of a speech you will be more engaged in what you are hearing and be able to retain the information.

• Follow the Golden Rule. Treat others as you wish to be treated during a speech. Provide speakers with authentic and positive nonverbal feedback to show your support for the speaker.

Conclusion

This chapter highlights the importance of listening and the role it plays in public speaking. Although we greatly underestimate the power of listening, it is perhaps the most valuable skill for effective communication. We hope that in the future, you will never find yourself in the position of the student in the opening of this chapter and will always know that your genes are not the clothing that you are wearing to class! The best audience is a listening audience.

Reflection Questions

• How much time do you spend listening each day (this includes school, friends and family, music, and television)? Is this surprising?

• Which function of listening is your greatest challenge? Why?

• What is your primary and secondary listening style? Given your response, do you now see where you might adapt your own listening style to someone else’s speaking style?

• Which listening barriers and ineffective forms of listening do you find most challenging in your own life? How might you use principles of active listening to address these challenges?

Key Terms

Action-Oriented

Active Listening

Aggressive Listening Appreciative Listening

Attending

Back-channel Cues

Comprehensive Listening

Content-Oriented Listening

Discriminative Listening

Empathetic Listening

Empathy

Evaluating

Evaluative Listening

Hearing

Information Overload

Insensitive Listening

Interpreting

Listening

Listening Barrier

Listening Style

Mindfulness

People-Oriented

Physical Noise

Physiological Noise Psychological Noise

Pseudolistening

Recalling

Receiving

Responding

Selective Listening

Sympathy

Time-Oriented

References

Bodie, G. D., & Worthington, D. L. (2010). Revisiting The listening styles profile (LSP-16): A confirmatory factor analytic approach to scale validation and reliability estimation. International Journal of Listening, 24(2), 69–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/10904011003744516

Floyd, J. J. (1985). Listening, a practical approach. Scott Foresman & Co.

Hargie, O. (2010). Skilled interpersonal communication: Research, theory and practice, 5th Edition. Taylor and Francis.

Hargie, O. (2021). Skilled interpersonal communication: Research, theory and practice. Routledge. 177.

Simpson, J. (2021, December 10). Council post: Finding Brand Success in the Digital World. Forbes. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/25/finding-brand-success-in-the-digital-world/