OVERCOMING CHALLENGES TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING-Faulty listening behavious

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Despite the importance of good listening,people seem to get worse at the skill as they grow older. Ninety percent of first-grade children could repeat what the teacher had been saying,and 80 percent of the second-graders could do so; but when the experiment was repeated with teenagers, the results were much less impressive. Only 44 percent of junior high students and 28 percent of senior high students could repeat their teachers’ remarks.

PSEUDOLISTENING

PSEUDOLISTENING is an imitation of the real thing. Pseudo listeners give the appearance of being attentive: They look you in the eye, nod and smile at the right times, and even may answer you occasionally. Behind that appearance of interest, however, something entirely different is going on, because pseudo listeners use a polite facade to mask thoughts that have nothing to do with what the speaker is saying.

SELECTIVE LISTENING

Selective listeners respond only to the parts of a speaker’s remarks that interest them, rejecting everything else. All of us are.

DEFENSIVE LISTENING

Defensive listeners take innocent comments as personal attacks. Teenagers who perceive parental questions about friends and activities as distrustful snooping are defensive listeners

AMBUSHING

 Ambushers listen carefully, but only because they are collecting information to attack what you have to say. The cross-examining prosecution attorney is a good example of an ambusher.

INSULATED LISTENING

insulated listeners simply fail to hear it or, rather, to acknowledge it. If you remind them about a problem—perhaps an unfinished job, poor grades, or the like—they’ll nod or answer you and then promptly forget what you’ve just said.

 INSENSITIVE LISTENING

Insensitive listeners are the final example of people who don’t receive another person’s messages clearly. People often don’t express their thoughts or feelings openly but instead communicate them through subtle and unconscious choice of words or nonverbal clues or both. Insensitive listeners aren’t able to look beyond the words and behavior to understand their hidden meanings. Instead, they take a speaker’s remarks at face value.

STAGE HOGGING

Stage hogs (sometimes called “conversational narcissists”) try to turn the topic of conversations to themselves instead of showing interest in the conversation. Interruptions are a hallmark of stage hogging. Besides preventing the listener from learning potentially valuable information ,stage hogging can damage the relationship between the interrupter and the speaker.