1.5: Listening Effectively
Learning Objectives
10. ENL1813 Course Learning Requirement 3: Interpret and reframe information gained from spoken messages in ways that show accurate analysis and comprehension
i. Identify barriers to effective listening (ENL1813B CLR 3.2)
ii. Identify and practise effective listening strategies (ENL1813B CLR 3.1)
iii. Employ active listening strategies (ENL1813A CLR 3.1)
If most communication these days is text-based, why is it still important to be an effective listener? Can’t we just wait till everyone who’s grown up avoiding in-person contact in favour of filtering all social interaction through their smartphones dominate the workforce so that conversation can be done away with at last?
No. Perhaps the first rule in business is to know your customer. If you don’t know what they want or need, you can’t successfully supply that demand and no one’s going to buy what you have to sell. If you don’t actively listen to what your customers or managers say they want, or fail to piece together what they don’t know they want from their description of a problem they need solved, then you may just find yourself always passed over for advancement. Business “intel” gleaned from conversation is the lifeblood of any business, as is the daily functioning of anyone working within one.
A receiver’s responsibilities in the communication process will be to use their senses of hearing, vision, and even touch, taste, and smell to understand messages in whatever channels target those senses. In the case of routine in-person communication, active listening and reading nonverbal social cues are vitally important to understanding messages, including subtext—that is, significant messages that are not explicitly stated but must be inferred from context and nonverbals. In the above case of the manager saying she’s hungry, for instance, she did not say “Join me for lunch so I can base my decision about whether to promote you on your social graces, emotional intelligence, and conversational ability.” Rather, plenty of reading between the lines was required of the receiver to figure out that:
- This is an invitation to lunch that ought to accepted
- Given the context, the invitation suggests that the manager is considering the receiver for the promotion (otherwise she would avoid the receiver altogether)
- This opportunity should be treated like an informal job interview
With so much of the communication process’s success riding on the responsibility of the receiver to understand both explicit and implicit messages, effective, active listening skills are keys to success in any business.
1.5.1: Receiver Errors
Unfortunately, plenty can go wrong on the receiver’s end in listening effectively and making the right inferences. We’ve already looked at the possibility that they may just lack knowledge about both the job and the broader context to understand fully the content of workplace messages and their underlying meanings. They may be:
- A poor reade