What Kind of Listener Are You?
There are different types o listeners out there, and learning about some of the different ways that people listen may help you use that information to improve your listening skills.
“While some people are good listeners, others are often not so good because something else is going on at the same time, or there is a barrier.”
Some of the common barriers to good listening:
Listening without making eye contact
Not paying attention to your own body language
Not taking time to minimize external distractions
Responding in a manner that is unexpected or inappropriate
Interrupting
Multitasking
Being unable to offer feedback
Not paying attention to the speaker’s body language
Tuning out on what you hear because you find it uninteresting
Pretending to pay attention
There are also some common skills that identifies as a habit of good listening, which includes:
Building trust and establishing rapport
Demonstrating concern
Paraphrasing to show understanding
Using nonverbal cues that show understanding such as nodding, eye contact, and leaning forward
Brief verbal affirmations like “I see,” “I know,” “Sure,” “Thank you,” or “I understand”
Asking open-ended questions
Asking specific questions to seek clarification
Waiting to disclose your opinion
Disclosing similar experiences to show understanding
Childhood Experiences and Listening Skills
What do your childhood experiences have to do with listening skills? A lot! Believe it or not, most listening skills and styles get their roots in childhood. The experiences you had in this area as a child are definitely a bid influence on the type of listener you are today.
As a child, we were somehow exposed to elements that has affective our listening skills, resulting to poor attention span. Children have many distractions that contribute to diminishing attention span which includes:
Environment
Exposure to television
Movies
Video games
Computers
Ipods
Other electronic devices
Good listening skills usually begin in childhood. If you did not gain good listening skills as a child, you probably will not be a good listener as an adult. However, it is never too late to learn those skills!
What Does Good Listening Look Like?
Physical attributes that poor listening skills displays are the following:
Not making eye contact
Slouching
Fiddling
Being distracted
There are many ways that we can identify poor listening skills and we all know how frustrating this can be. However, there are also characteristics that demonstrate effective listening. Just as someone can pick up poor listening, he or she can also identify if someone is doing a good job in listening.
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