Why is listening so important in life and at work?
Listening is a key component of effectivecommunication skills.
Without listening, you can’t understand what other people are really trying to say. It’s easy to get something wrong and make assumptions.
On the other hand, when you actively listen, you can fully communicate with someone else.
Listening is the most important part of communication. That’s because it allows you to come up with a substantial and meaningful response. You can pick up on subtleties you wouldn’t have otherwise,especially with body language.
If something isn’t clear, you can ask clarifying questions. This is something you might not have done without active listening.
At work, communication is an important soft skill. According to LinkedIn's 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 80% of companies say that soft skills are increasingly important to their success.
Listening is also important forproductive collaboration.
According to the same LinkedIn report, collaboration is the third most important soft skill companies need.
Imagine trying to collaborate if you can’t actively listen to your colleagues. Information gets lost, and misunderstandings occur.
The same can happen if everyone on the team uses different levels of listening. Some people will be more engaged than others. Not everyone will get the same understanding of the same conversation.
You can avoid this if everyone actively listens to each other.
Plus, when you actively listen, your colleagues and your superiors will notice that you come up with meaningful responses.
Listening is also crucial if you want to learn effectively.
Without attentive listening, it can be easy to miss small details that make a difference in your learning.
Active listening games
You can improve team communication with active listening games.
In one such game, you and your colleagues can split up into groups of two. The first person in each group is given a picture, while the other person is given a pen and paper.
The second participant needs to ask questions in order to accurately draw the image the first participant is holding.
In another game, participants need to mime non-verbal cues to express their feelings about a topic. The other participants need to write down what they believe the other person feels.
Finally, you can practice active listening by having all participants listen to one person speak for three to five minutes. During this time, no other participants may speak. Afterwards, the other participants need to paraphrase what they think the other person said.
It is to evaluate and scrutinize what is being said. A. Discriminative
B. Empathic
C. Informational
D. Critical
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Discriminative listening
Discriminative listening afocused and usually instrumental type of listening that is primarily physiological and occurs mostly at the receiving stage of the listening process. Here we engage in listening to scan and monitor our surroundings in order to isolate particular auditory or visual stimuli. For example, we may focus our listening on a dark part of the yard while walking the dog at night to determine if the noise we just heard presents us with any danger. Or we may look for a particular nonverbal cue to let us know our conversational partner received our message (Hargie, 2011). In the absence of a hearing impairment, we have an innate and physiological ability to engage in discriminative listening. Although this is the most basic form of listening, it provides the foundation on which more intentional listening skills are built. This type of listening can be refined and honed. Think of how musicians, singers, and mechanics exercise specialized discriminative listening to isolate specific aural stimuli and how actors, detectives, and sculptors discriminate visual cues that allow them to analyze, make meaning from, or recreate nuanced behavior (Wolvin & Coakley, 1993).
Types of listening
Techniques >Listening > Types of listening
Discriminative | Comprehension | Critical | Biased | Evaluative | Appreciative | Sympathetic | Empathetic | Therapeutic | Dialogic| Relationship | See also
Here are six types of listening, starting with basic discrimination of sounds and ending in deep communication.