Guides for Effective Listening

1. Be conscious of your listening behavior. Identify your listening problems and work to solve them.
2. Motivate yourself to listen. Be opportunistic. Get all you can out of the messages you hear.
3. Prepare yourself to listen. Put problems and biases aside so that you can be more attentive and open to new learning experiences.
4. Control your reactions. Learn to recognize situations that cause you to daydream and strive to control them. Identify your trigger words so that they become less powerful. Resist distractions. Postpone evaluations and judgments until you have heard all the speaker has to say.
5. Work at listening. Develop a plan to extend your attention span. Seek out new and varied listening experiences that exercise your mind.
6. Listen for ideas. Do not try to write down everything you hear. Focus on identifying the main points the speaker is making.
7. Concentrate on the message. Don’t allow extraneous factors to interfere with listening effectiveness. ¹⁰

Why is listening so difficult that we must train ourselves to learn how to listen? We only listen to what we want to listen to—it is a selective process. If someone that we don’t like starts talking, we tune them out. But if they have credibility, we listen. People who don’t want to listen to certain topics (or certain speakers) simply tune them out.

Because listening is a mental process, if we are thinking negatively we will only hear the negative; if we are thinking in a positive mode, we will be listening in a positive mode. The listening and the attitude coincide. For example, someone may say, “I do not like the color red on you.” You may be thinking negatively and interpret this as “They don’t like me.” But the reality is that they just don’t like the color red. If you aren’t making that connection with your heart and your mind, you will jump to the wrong conclusion.

The ultimate listener should participate and be open and receptive to all points of view. As you analyze the information you receive—not just in speech class, but from all the sources around you—you need to understand and appreciate many different points of view. Releasing your personal biases and judgments will be one of the most helpful and significant changes that you can incorporate in your life.

We not only listen with our ears, we listen with our entire bodies. When you listen, you should consciously display the receptive physical demeanor known as an “open body” position. In an open body position your legs and arms are uncrossed, you are looking at the presenter’s eyes, and you are leaning slightly forward. This position enables you, as a listener, to make the connection necessary to receive the information offered by the speaker. If you are in open body position, it shows that you are listening and that your heart is open to receive. Closing down your body with crossed legs, folded arms, and a scowling face signifies that you are not willing to participate in any dialogue or any exchange of communication. You have totally shut down, both physically and mentally.

It is very important that you make a choice when it comes to being a good listener. I hope that your choice will be to follow the Indian philosophy of Angelis Arrien:

Show up,

Pay attention,

Tell the truth, and

Don’t be attached to the outcome.