Please answer the BOLD Conscious listening is necessary to achieve improved rela
ID: 3450342 • Letter: P
Question
Please answer the BOLD
Conscious listening is necessary to achieve improved relationships at work and home. How do we listen? Discuss the many ways in which you listen, at home/at work. Then elaborate on what you learned about conscious listening. In what ways is this different from the way you listen now? Say how following Julian Treasure's recommendations could change your understand of people, of situations at work and in your personal life.
Below are links and notes that may help answer.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELgvDMTKyBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKayQthlwts
Chapter 6: Mindful Listening
Listening is a process that involves our ears, minds, and hearts; hearing is an activity that involves sound waves stimulating our ear drums.
Being mindful involves paying complete attention to what is happening in
an interaction at that moment in time without imposing our own thoughts,
feelings, or judgments on others.
Hearing is when we physically receive the sound waves.
To listen, we also need to select and organize the many stimuli that are
part of a conversation.
Once we select, take in, and organize the stimuli, we attach meaning to or
interpret the messages.
As we engage in communication, we use both verbal and nonverbal
responding means to indicate we are listening.
After a particular interaction has ended, remembering what was
exchanged is the last part of the listening process.
There are two main categories of obstacles or barriers to effective listening
as well as examples of times when we do not listen at all.
Obstacles within the situation are external factors we cannot control.
Message overload occurs because we cannot take in all communication with the same level of mindfulness.
Message complexity occurs when the messages are too detailed, use technical terms, or contain many difficult connections between the various sentence parts.
Noise is any verbal or nonverbal stimuli in the environment that keep us from being good listeners.
The other set of listening barriers are internal obstacles, which are those that we as individuals can control.
Preoccupation happens when we are so caught up in what is
happening with us that we forget to pay careful attention to what is
happening in our interaction with another person or people.
Prejudgment happens when we think we know what others are
going to say before they say it, or we tune them out because we
believe they have nothing to offer.
Emotionally loaded language can “push our buttons,” either
positively or negatively, and we end up tuning out the other person.
Because effective listening requires so much energy, there are times when a lack of effort (time or energy) hinders us.
Sometimes we forget that different types of interactions call for different types of listening; similarly, we sometimes forget that people with different experiences have learned different speaking and listening styles.
C. In addition to barriers to listening, there are times when we engage in nonlistening behaviors.
Pseudolistening is when we pretend that we are paying full attention to a communication interaction.
Monopolizing occurs when we are constantly trying to redirect the communication back to ourselves and our concerns without giving others the opportunity to complete their thoughts.
Selective listening happens when we focus only on certain aspects of a conversation, either those with which we do not agree or those that do not interest us at the moment.
We engage in defensive listening when we assume a message has negative connotations (relational level meanings) even though the person did not intend to criticize, attack, or be hostile toward us.
When we ambush another person, we listen only for information that will help us attack the other person and/or that person’s ideas.
Literal listening is ignoring the relational level of meaning.
In different situations, we listen to accomplish different communication
goals.
Sometimes we are interested in the pleasure or enjoyment we receive
from listening to a particular type of communication.
To gather and evaluate information others provide we need to be mindful,
control obstacles, ask questions, and create devices to help us remember
and organize information.
Listening to support others requires that we are mindful, suspend
judgment, understand the other person’s perspective on the situation, paraphrase what has been said to check the accuracy of our interpretations, use minimal encouragers, ask questions, and support the person even if we do not support the content or ideas expressed.
Adapting listening to communication goals
A. Listen for Pleasure
Listen for Information 1. Be Mindful
2. Control Obstacles
3. Ask Questions
4. Use Aids to Recall
5. Organize Information
Listen to Support Others 1. Be Mindful
2. Be Careful Expressing Judgments
3. Understand the Other Person’s Perspective
a. Paraphrasing is a method of clarifying others’ meanings or needs by reflecting our interpretation of their communication back to them
4. Express Support
V. Three listening guidelines reinforce effective practices.
Being mindful involves listening fully to what is happening.
Adapting our listening to the situation at hand, our goals, the others’ goals,
and the individuals involved makes us better able to understand and
respond appropriately during and after the interaction.
Putting forth the necessary effort to listen actively focuses our attention on
the communication and away from the potential distractions/barriers we often encounter.
Explanation / Answer
Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary. Also, I have written the answer with a macro and not a micro view. I have written how we as a society have become poor listeners and how we could perhaps be better. I have picked this perspective to give the response more focus.
(Answer) In modern times, communication has become far less tedious than it was a few decades ago. Letters, wires and telegrams took days or even months to finish a simple two-way conversation. Telephones were scarce, but even when they did get popular, international phone calls were choppy at best.
With the advancement in technology, people at antipodes are able to communicate easily through telephone or video calls. Emails, which are popular for formal communication usually takes seconds or less to reach the recipient.
Business, friendly communication and even classified information are easily exchanged through these modern mediums. When a medium is popular, it becomes a spot for advertisement. A platform that is used for advertisement consists of sellers, buyers, competitors and sponsors, thus making it a marketplace. The world has become “too loud” simply because modern communication media has a symbiotic marketplace that feeds off it.
Social media platforms have become like a virtual “times square”, with adverts and businesses all over the place. Each of these entities competes with each other to get the most attention from the consumers. The result is garish communication tactics that continuously talk to us without ever inculcating the value of listening.
Themes:
When Soundbites and sensationalism are so popular, people usually jump to take sides even for complicates issues. There are some problems that go beyond “Yes or no.” Controversial issues like the “pro-life or pro-choice” problem goes beyond picking a side. There has been a flimsy focus on the women involved in making the choice. People are yet to talk about financial responsibilities of the biological father, government aid to single mothers, healthcare for children, primary education facilities and other issues that are actually the reason why it becomes difficult for parents to bring up a child, let alone a single mother. When such issues are listened to, analysed and even well-addressed, the life or choice issue should be able to become a thing of the past. When a complex issue is reduced to nothing more than a quick opinion when views are filtered, Soundbites and sensationalism, a potential life form is reduced to nothing but an opinion and not an ethical discussion. Possibly because we are too lazy to consider a long discourse, we have limited important issues to mere “black and white.”
Good listening can be observed in people with a certain amount of patience. It takes patience to give someone else a chance to talk. It takes a certain sense of selflessness to assume that perhaps someone else’s opinion or story is just as important or perhaps more important than yours. Above all, it takes a profound understanding to learn that if my own opinion goes unsaid, the world would not meet any catastrophe.