What is a distracted listener?

Be a Serious Listener: Resist Distractions and Listen Actively

Resisting distractions and listening actively are two ways to become a more effective listener.

Learning Objectives

Explain how resisting distractions and listening actively can make you a more effective listener

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Distractions can be internal or external. External distractions include auditory, visual, or physical noise. Internal distractions may be psychological or emotional.
In order to best focus in on a speaker’s message, try to eliminate as many distractions as possible.
Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to feed back what they hear to the speaker.
Active listening also involves observing and assessing the speaker’s behavior and body language.

Key Terms

active listening: A particular communication technique that requires the listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the speaker.

Resisting Distraction

Distractions Are Everywhere: Learning how to tune out distractions enables people to be better listeners.

Distractions can come in all shapes and sizes. To be serious, effective listeners, people must learn how to resist the distractions that cross their path so they can better focus in on what they are trying to hear. Distractions and noise come in two broad types: internal and external.

External distractions often come in the form of physical noise in the physical environment. Auditory and visual distractions are often the most easily identifiable types of external distractions. Loud or extraneous noises can inhibit effective listening, as can unnecessary or excessive images. Think about trying to have a meaningful conversation with a friend while someone else is watching an action movie in the same room. Pretty impossible, right?

Internal distractions often refer to psychological and emotional noise. Distractions can also originate internally or can be physical responses to the environment. Feeling hungry, upset, or physically uncomfortable can be just as detrimental to effective listening as extraneous things in the physical environment. If a speaker is nervous about presenting a speech, he or she may have a litany of negative thoughts in his or her inner monologue, or the “little voice in your head. ” Internal distractions also occur when someone is thinking about plans for after your speech, or thinking about topics and things completely unrelated to the speech at hand. These are all examples of internal distractions.

In order to best focus in on a speaker’s message, try to eliminate as many possible distractions as possible. Turn off all mobile devices, relocate to a quiet space, and close unnecessary windows on the computer.

Active Listening

Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to feed back what they hear to the speaker. Most often, listeners will do this by re-stating or paraphrasing what they have heard in their own words. This activity confirms what the listener heard and, moreover, confirms that both parties understand each other. It is important to note, however, that by paraphrasing the speaker’s message, the listener is not necessarily agreeing with the speaker. Paraphrasing also helps the listener better retain that information for future access.

If someone is actively listening, then he or she is typically not distracted. Speakers can also cultivate the habit of avoiding distractions (for example, by addressing questions after the presentation, not during).

In addition to internalizing what a speaker says, active listening also involves observing and assessing the speaker’s behavior and body language, and relaying that information back to the speaker as well. Having the ability to interpret a speaker’s body language lets the listener develop a more accurate understanding of the speaker’s message. When the listener does not respond to the speaker’s nonverbal language, he or she engages in a content-only response that ignores the emotions that guide the message; this can limit understanding.

The ability to listen actively demonstrates sincerity on the part of the listener and helps to make sure that no information is being assumed or taken for granted. Active listening is most often used to improve personal relationships, reduce misunderstanding and conflicts, strengthen cooperation, and foster understanding.

What is Distracted Listening?

Distracted listening is when someone is supposed to be paying attention to what another person is saying, but is actually thinking about or doing something else. Distracted listening can be caused by a number of reasons, including:

Feeling stressed or anxious about another area of life, so much so that one cannot focus on what someone else is saying.
Trying to listen in a loud or otherwise distracting environment.
Attempting to multitask while the other person is speaking.
Thinking about what one is going to say in response to what the other person is currently saying.

Characteristics of Distracted Listening

When someone isn’t truly listening to what you’re saying, it’s rarely done with malicious intent. Here are a few of the ways you might be able to identify when someone isn’t paying attention so that you can open a healthy dialogue to address the issue. Not all of the characteristics below will match all people, but here are some common ones:

Little Eye Contact or Head Movement

When someone is paying attention to you, they will often be looking at your face and eyes, respond with facial expressions, and may even nod occasionally. If someone is staring at a fixed space for any length of time, and isn’t responding with any non-verbal cues, this could be a sign that they’re thinking about something else.

Too Much Head Movement or Smiling

On the contrary, a lot of nodding or smiling a lot could tell you that the other person has checked out and is no longer listening to what is being said. At this moment, they may be trying to appease you or appear to be engaged, but in reality are not interested or have other priorities..

Fidgeting

If someone is tapping their feet or their fingers, shifting around a lot, or otherwise moving in a way that indicates that they’re bored, it may be because they are uninterested or even focused on something else versus just having a nervous habit. They may be ready to move on to the next conversation or end that one entirely.

Interrupting

Sometimes, when people get excited about a topic, they can actually close themselves off from listening by interrupting what you’re saying to discuss what they want to talk about. While it’s true that something you said might have ignited this excited interruption, they’ve decided that they’re now going to control the conversation, making it so that you can’t say what you want to. It may feel like they think their ideas or point is more important than yours.

Closed Off Body Language

Actions quite often speak louder than words, and this is especially true when you’re in a conversation with someone. If another person has made the conscious or unconscious decision to stop listening to you, they may cross their arms, face away from you, or even begin walking away. This is a clear indication that they’ve decided that they’re done with the conversation and may be trying to get away.

Of course, first consider that they did not hear you or misinterpreted your pause as finished conversation rather than you were gathering your thoughts to continue the dialogue.

Types of Ineffective Listening

All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Just like happiness (or happy families), effective listening is fairly easy to describe. Our page on Effective Listening provides a model that is generally applicable to most situations. However, there are many, many different ways to listen ineffectively, and a huge number of barriers that may prevent or hinder listening.

However, we can also identify some particular categories of ineffective listening. John Stoker, an author and communications teachers, has identified seven different types. They are:

1. Evaluative listening

Evaluative listeners spend all their time evaluating what you are saying, and making judgements about it. You can spot an evaluative listener, because they will always respond with either agreement or disagreement (or possibly both, in the form of ‘yes, but…’).

The big problem with these listeners is that they are hearing everything from their own point of view. Everything is passed through a prism of their own experiences and opinions. This means that they often miss critical information simply because it does not fit with their view of the world.

The other problem is that speaker and listener can get into a negative spiral of argument and counter-argument. Instead of building on each other’s communication, they are engaged in knocking it down.

2. Assumptive listening

Assumptive listeners make assumptions about the speaker’s meaning or intention—and usually before the speaker has finished.

They may therefore finish other people’s sentences, or jump in with a response before the speaker has really finished. Engaging with an assumptive listener is hard work, because you constantly have to go back and explain your meaning again because they have interpreted it incorrectly.

3. Self-protective listening

Here, the listener is so wrapped up in their own situation and/or emotional response to it that they simply have no brain-space to hear or concentrate on anything else.

In other words, they are NOT really listening at all, and they are certainly not engaging with what anyone else says. It is a moot point whether this should actually be described as ‘listening’ at all—except that these listeners will often be nodding and smiling, and generally looking like they are engaging with what is being said. However, when they come to respond, it will be obvious that they have not really heard or taken on board anything that is said.

These listeners often simply repeat their negative stories over and over again—and with increasing levels of negative emotion. The only way out is to break the spiral (see box).

A way out

Self-protective listeners may need help to break out of their ‘vicious spiral’. Transactional analysis offers some clues about how to do this, suggesting that they may be in ‘Child’ mode. This makes them turn inward, and want to avoid anything that might be threatening, like other ideas.

To help them, you will have to ‘hook’ their Child with sympathy, then find a way to engage the Adult.

There is more about this in our page on Transactional Analysis.

4. Judgemental listening

Judgemental listeners will constantly criticise what speakers are saying. This type of listening is similar to evaluative listening, but usually with more negativity and less opportunity to respond. These listeners often have preconceived ideas about the speaker (for example, bias or prejudice based on how they look, or their background). This may prevent them from considering the speaker’s ideas with an open mind.

This type of listening tends to result in the speaker shutting down, and refusing to provide any more information. Being constantly criticised quickly becomes unpleasant.

5. Affirmative listening

Affirmative listening is more or less the polar opposite of judgemental listening. Affirmative listeners only ‘hear’ messages with which they agree. They therefore only listen for points that they can support, and not those that show different opinions.

Having an affirmative listener is at first quite pleasant. They tend to agree with you, which is nice. However, after a while, you realise that they only agree with some points—and possibly not very important ones—but refuse to engage with anything else.

The problem here is that these people only listen for themselves. They want their opinion to be validated—and have no real interest in anyone else. This quickly gets one-sided and tiresome, especially if you are genuinely interested in a debate that explores different perspectives.

6. Defensive listening

A defensive listener takes everything that is said as a personal attack.

These people therefore feel the need to defend themselves against everything, and to justify everything that they say. They often use the phrase ‘Yes, but…’, because they have no interest in building on any other communication—only to justify themselves. They also find it hard to explore other points of view, because anything different is a threat.

7. Authoritative listening

Authoritative listeners listen solely in order to advise. They always know best, and are always ready to tell you what to do.

You can often spot authoritative listeners by the use of the words ‘You should…’ or ‘You need…’ in their sentences.

A Common Thread?

You may have spotted that all these types of ineffective listening are related to the listener’s attitude. They may perceive a problem with the speaker, or simply have a ‘mental block’ about the subject.

Whatever the cause, their pattern of thinking is not conducive to genuine, effective listening.

It is affecting how they relate to other people, and the messages that they hear in other people’s communication. These attitudes may have many causes, such as

Preconceived ideas or bias
These mean that you are not open to other people’s ideas and opinions. Biases may be personal or cultural. For example, in some cultures, ideas are only considered acceptable from those in senior positions (and you may be interested in our page on Intercultural Awareness for more examples like this). You may not trust the speaker on a personal level, and therefore find it hard to be open to their ideas on an intellectual level.
Previous experiences
These may affect your expectations about people and/or topics or situations. We are all influenced by previous experiences in life. We respond to people based on personal appearance, how initial introductions or welcomes were received and/or previous interpersonal encounters. This may affect how you approach an individual. You may also find that someone says something that reminds you of a previous experience, and you start to think about that instead of listening. The key here is to consider whether your previous experience is going to be helpful—and if not, set it aside.
Having a closed mind.
We all have ideals and values that we believe to be correct. It can therefore be difficult to listen to contradictory views. However, the key to effective listening and interpersonal skills more generally is the ability to open your mind, and take time to understand why others think about things differently to you—and then use this information to gain a better understanding of the speaker.