What Are Listening Skills - Essay Example

?Management Skills Executive Summary It is Lee Lacocca, the former Chrysler CEO who once wrote that he wished he could be able to find an institution that essentially helped teach individuals how to listen. This is because it was important for managers to fundamentally be able to try and actively listen almost as much as they were able to talk. Good managers tend to exhibit the typical tendency of being able to listen as much much more as compared to how much they usually talk (Collins and Rourke, 2009). The importance that good listening skills happen to play in the professional lives of not only the mangers in the various organizations but also in the other employees cannot be over emphasized. Managers and all other employees need to constantly plan how they will be able to communicate with their fellow managers and other employees for good communication to be able to take place in any organization. At times, it may also be important for managers and other staff members to evaluate exactly what they will need to wear to meetings and other gatherings within the work area, so as to evaluate the impact that that particular mode of dressing will eventually have on the various conversations that the individual will engage in. However, one aspect of all interpersonal communication skills not only within organizations but also among individuals outside the organization that is constantly seen to receive the least attention to is the listening aspect (Collins and Rourke, 2009). It is fairly rare to find individuals planning on how they will listen to conversations so as to be able to accurately and quickly respond to them (Wolvin, 2011), however, listening is arguably one of the key pieces in an individual’s interpersonal communications skill set. The relatively large void in the education of this skill set is found to be rather large and this is quite alarming considering the amount of time that individuals have to spend in listening during the normal program of a single work day. In a research conducted in the United States on the importance of listening as a vital skill set, it was found that the average worker usually spent about 8.4% of their time at the normal workplace engaging in various forms of written communication, workers also spend about 13.3% of their time on average engaged in reading while they also spent a whooping 23% of their time speaking. However, these figures comparatively dim in light of the fact that they usually spend about 55% of their total time at work engaged in listening. Managers who clock an average of about 60% of their time listening are seen to spend even more time at work engaged in listening. While company executives spend an event higher amount of time of approximately 75% engaged in listening (Collins and Rourke, 2009). The key problem in the listening aspect of most organizations lies in the fact that individuals generally tend to get a dismal 50% of all that happens to be said to them. They also only manage to retain only about 25% of what has been said to them with after a time frame of about 48 hours (Thomas, 2007). These figures tend to portray a relatively dim image of the overall development of listening skills in organizations. The fundamental objectives that will be targeted by this paper will to essentially try to highlight the importance of the development of adequate listening skills. To do this, the paper will essentially cover some of the individual theoretic concepts that are found to be key in the evaluation of listening skills. The paper will also look to address my own individual action plans in relation to the development of my own listening skills as well as highlighting my achievements during the development of my own listening skills. Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 What are Listening Skills? 5 Theories of Listening Skills 6 Individual Report 8 The Application of the Theory of Attentive Listening to the Development of my Listening Skills 9 Measures of Achievement 10 The Application of the Theory of Implied Meaning and the Results 10 Measures of Achievement 11 The Application of Meta communication Objectives and the Results 11 Measures of Achievement 12 The Application of Communication Theory and the Resultant Effects of this Application 12 Measures of Achievement 13 Conclusion 13 What are Listening Skills? In the development of a possible definition for listening skills, it is critical that to first establish what exactly is listening. Listening is broadly defined as the effort that is made by an individual to try and hear something, to heed or event pay attention to something. Listening is broadly considered to be quite different from hearing as hearing is defined as mainly being the physiological process via which the ears are able to absorb the various sound waves that happen to be within an individual’s surround (West and Turner, 2009). These absorbed sound waves are then seen to be transferred along a network of neural pathways which end up channeling them to the brain. It is important for an individual to essentially be able to hear so as for them to be able to listen, but listening is found to often require much more processing within the brain as compared to hearing. It is evidently possible for a given single individual to possess excellent hearing but be quite poor at listening (Sharma, 2008). According to downs (2008), the process of listening is generally seen to involve a set of five different steps that are usually categorized as being attending, interpreting, understanding, remembering as well as responding. The listening process is found to be largely active as opposed to being passive as it involved the use of a number of various tools and behaviors so as for it to be most effective. There are several different types of listening that are seen to variously include, informational, critical, appreciative, as well as empathic listening. Each of these listening is found to commonly invoke the use of it is own techniques as well as characteristics (Bove?e, 2003). The main determinant of which type of listening will be used in a given conversation is usually found to be the individuals involved in the conversation as well as the actual situation. Self-awareness is often found to be one of the most vital skills that are developed by managers who happen to be perceived as being good listeners and it is essentially fundamental for persons in management to identify exactly what are their actual weaknesses and strengths so as to be able to develop relatively good listening skills (Downs, 2008). Listening is found to be an activity that many individuals tend to relatively take for granted and it is usually taken in different forms by various individuals. Different individual generally tend to employ the use of different listening tools in the same listening situation. It is critical for managers to be able to understand this in their dealings with various employees and fellow managers within a given organization. Although there is a definite given technique that is employed by most managers that helps them to generally become more effective listeners, some of the managers who have developed effective listening skills generally do not tend to use all the various techniques but have instead focused on perfecting some of the techniques that they usually employ in their everyday lives. These managers sometimes also use the very same strategy in a variety of different ways to facilitate the accomplishment of the same goal of trying to constantly improve on the effectiveness of their general listening skills (Downs, 2008). Theories of Listening Skills There are several theories that are essentially seen to be related to Listening skills. These theories are found to mostly try to delineate the various modes of listening attentiveness, the various metacommunicaition strategies, implied meaning of the conversation as well as the main purpose of the actual conversation in question. Some of these theories are seen to variously include: Theories of Listening Attentiveness: One of the theoretical models of listening attentiveness is found to posit that there actually exists three levels of possible listening engagement. These three levels are found to essentially be competitive, which is found to attempt to try and deflect or avoid any possible criticism, the second level of this model is reflective or active listening, which is found to actively try and evaluate various points of comparison in addition to using a wide variety of question and paraphrasing the third level of engagement as per this model is the passive level which is found to often act as a passive audience that is keen to mainly relay on various assumptions. One of the theories in this category is found to be the Working memory theory. Working Memory theory The working memory theory was initially proposed back in 1974 by Graham Hitch and his partner Alan Baddeley. The two are seen to have proposed this model in an attempt to try and provide an accurate model that would explain short-term memory. The model that was postulated by the two suggest that we are able to simultaneously manage to attend to a variety of multiple stimuli, this is in addition to our ability to be able to effectively store other stimuli as well as our having an innate ability to be able to retrieve stored information for the purpose of long-term memory storage (West and Turner, 2011). Metacommunication Theory: This theory is seen to commonly observe that most effective listeners employ the use of a variety of techniques that attempt to try and call attention to the very act of communication itself. Some of these techniques might include various anticipatory remarks, a myriad of adoptive comments, as well as various reflective statements. They theory postulates that careful listening generally helps in the provision of important clues (Collins, Jordan and Coleman, 2010). Theory of Implied Meanings: This theory is seen to try and build on the fact that most statements often have more than one single meaning that may range form an implicit to an explicit meaning. While most poor listeners tend to distort or even ignore the main intention of a particular statement, most effective listeners will try and use both body language as well as the context of the message so as to effectively manage to obtain a critical sense of what exactly is the meaning of a given statement. Purposes of Communication Theory: All listeners are found to have the innate ability of being able to intuitively perceive the main purpose of the communication that is being received from a given speaker. This is found to be so regardless of whether that given communication is a mere expression of emotions, various ideas or thought even a simple fact. The main role of a listener is to ensure that they try and gather all the communication and information that has been learned.it is important for listeners to portray an understanding of how a listener feels in the event that the speaker is keen to express emotions in the communication that they are providing. One of the more common theories relate to the purposes of communication theory is the Schema theory. Schema Theory Some of the popular listening scholars have been keen to suggest that content familiarity and various cognitive factors are found to essentially be more relevant to the overall individual interpretation and the subsequent assigning of meaning to a given message as compared to factor. The presence of too little or too much schematic knowledge as pertaining to a particular topic can ultimately serve to inhibit an individual’s understanding of a message. The cognitive representation of knowledge is seen to include a variety of identity-based logics as well as the knowledge that is found to have been uniquely developed well within the actual borders or an individual’s gender, social, primary culture, as well as the identification of other related experiences. The primary role of Schema is found to essentially be to assign meaning to the various aural stimuli that are seen to form the repertoire of an individual’s knowledge, perspectives and experiences (Stapleton, 2008). Individual Report I once attempted to test these theories on listening by attempting to try and basically apply these theories to my various interactions so as to establish the effectiveness of these theories as applied to my development and growth as a manager. I kept a diary so as to be able to keep track of the various measures that I was implementing in my growth as well as to be able to relate my perceived effectiveness of the measures that I was implementing. I kept the diary for a time period of about eight weeks as I was keen to assign each theory a time period that would run for about two weeks to critically apply and evaluate the effectiveness of the theory to the development of my listening skills in my everyday life. I initially tried to assess the effectiveness of my listening skills without applying any of the theories so as to be able to try and formulate a base that will act as a basic template from which to work from. The dismal results of my listening skills served to further convince me on the importance of trying to apply these skills to my everyday life. In attempting to apply these theories to my everyday life with the aim of generally improving my listening skills, I was surprised at how my listening skills improved as evidenced by the feedback I received from my colleagues, friends and tutors who were keen to note my improved performance that was largely as a result of my developed listening skills. I was also able to relate more easily with different people both at work and at school largely due to my improved listening skills. The Application of the Theory of Attentive Listening to the Development of my Listening Skills According to (Collins and Rourke, 2009), it is not that managers do not manage to grasp the value and innate importance of ensuring that they are able to listen very well. This aspect is proven by research that has been instrumental in showing that most midlevel managers generally tend to not only tend to regard listening to be their most frequently used communication skills, they also tend to regard it as being quite important in the development of their listening skills. With this in mind, I sought to apply various theories related to attentive listening by attempting to sharpen all my three levels of listening engagement. While trying to settle a dispute among some of my colleagues at work, I managed to get the opportunity to try and further sharpen and test my reflective listening capability. Although two colleagues were initially engaging in competitive engagement, where they were keen to try and deflect all the blame on each other, I was able to quickly deduce this and after maintaining a passive approach so as to ascertain the magnitude of the problem as the two colleagues presented various views on what exactly transpired and resulted in the mishap at work, I was able to critically analyze and evaluate the entire situation by asking a variety of questions which fundamentally served to make the situation more clear. As the two presented their views, I ensured that I constantly paraphrased what they were saying so as for them to be able to confirm to be what I essentially thought to be the key highlights and main points of consideration in the argument. Measures of Achievement By the end of the dispute resolution, I had ably resolved the tumultuous dispute between the two in a manner that both deemed to have been greatly satisfactory. Unknown to myself, one of the company’s executives happened to be keenly observing how I was attempting to resolve the disagreement and upon the resolution of the disagreement, he promptly called me into his office and commended me on my performance. The Application of the Theory of Implied Meaning and the Results As earlier shown, listening is regarded as being an active process that is seen to require attention and effort from the listener. Listening is essentially seen to complete the cycle of communication. It is important for managers to ensure that they concentrate on establishing not only the stated meaning of a given communication, but also establishing its implied meaning as well (Puckett and Byers, 2004). I recently had the opportunity of practicing my skills at deducing the actual implied meaning in conversations while relating to a friend. One of my best friends came to visit me recently and on finding me with one of my work colleagues, he seemed to be acting strange all along and his conversation seemed to be quite hard to follow. He kept insisting that I go to another of my colleague’s houses on that day in the evening as he wanted us to have a brief meeting. I was presently perplexed by this as both my best friend and I happened to not be quite close to this particular colleague due to the happening of an earlier incident that had effectively served to damage the relationship that we enjoyed with each other. Despite my efforts to remind him of this, he kept on insisting and asked me to call him for more details on the time of the meeting later on in the day as he left, I quickly dismissed him and thought it to be particularly strange of him to be so vague. However, later on in the day, he called me and on finding out that my colleague had left, he quickly informed me that he was inferring to a party that was to be held at my colleague’s house and since the party happened to be invites only, my colleague had only invited his fellow colleagues to the party. My best friend further went on to clarify that he had not wished to hurt the feelings of my visitor who would maybe have wanted to attend the party if he had happened to her of it. Measures of Achievement Upon further reflection on this incident later on in the day, I established that my skills at deducing the actual implied meaning of a given communication or statement were actually quite wanting. I therefore resolved to attempt and read more on the subject in addition to attending any seminars on listening skills that might happen to be held within my locality. The Application of Meta communication Objectives and the Results Studies show that it is essentially not the amount of meta communication involved but the delivery of the actual meta communication that serves to determine its effectiveness (Bakeman and Gottman, 1997). I found that the best application for attempting to better apply my metacommunication skills was during the analysis of a work related issue with my colleague. As we attempted to determine on the best approach to use in the resolution of the issue, I successfully managed to use various anticipatory remarks that established what exactly we were hoping to try and talk about. I also used various reflective statements that sought to review the points that my colleague had made earlier on as well as adaptive comments that sought to ascertain and clarify what I had said. Measures of Achievement We were able to satisfactorily resolve the issue and my colleague commented on how easy it was to communicate with me as opposed to the difficulties that she usually encountered in attempting to communicate with other individuals. I pointed out to this colleague how I had effectively applied meta-communication theory during our discussion and explained to her how exactly the theory worked. Taking a cue from me, my colleague adopted the use of the theory and managed to greatly develop her listening skills. The Application of Communication Theory and the Resultant Effects of this Application It is important for one to try and consider the main purpose of a given communication in not only professional, but also in personal situations (Lehman and DuFrene, 2011). In the application of the purposes of communication theory, I sought to help some of my classmates as they sought to analyse a certain case study that we were supposed to analyse. During a discussion with one of my colleagues, I noticed that he essentially understood the case study from a dissimilar perspective to my understanding of the case study. I essentially observed this to be as a result of the Schema theory that postulates that the main cognitive representation of an individual’s knowledge is essentially determined by a variety of factors such as gender, culture, and the society around an individual. It was quite interesting discussing the case study with the classmate and we were able to greatly analyse the case study since we were able to perceive it from different views. Measures of Achievement This experience caused me to understand the importance that Schema theory played in determining an individual’s perception. I was able to learn from this experience to respect the view of others as I understood that just because an individual’s views were essentially different from my own, they were not fundamentally wrong. Conclusion Listening skills serve a critical role in helping managers become more effective at their work (Griffin, 2012). It is vital that managers try to ensure that they cultivate and develop effective listening skills. The theories pertaining to listening skills are relatively numerous but they can essentially be categorized into several key theories. These key theories can help in the creation of a general guideline and better help an individual to understand the key theories related to listening skills. After conducting an assessment on myself where I sought to establish the effectiveness of my listening skills, I found that while I excelled at some of the listening skills, I managed to perform quite dismally in others. This caused me to essentially seek to try and develop my listening skills as the study I conducted caused me to fully realize the importance of these skills. Bibliography Collins, D. S., and O'Rourke, S. J. 2009. 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