Listening Skills: Two Ears – Eight Ways to Use Them

 

Humans, as social beings, have a physiological and psychological need to connect and communicate.

 

Communication, by definition, is a 2-way process and while being able to articulate one’s thoughts is critical, being able to listen well is equally critical in any communication.

 

Listening is a critical life skill.

 

Types of listening.

Discriminative Listening: When you are listening not only to the words, but also to the tone, body language, verbal and non-verbal cues. This is a skill we are born with when we did not have language skills and that is how a child can recognize if the person is being kind or angry with them even if the words / language is not understood. We generally use this skill, along with other types of listening.

 

Comprehensive Listening: Comprehensive listening, in contrast, is a lot about listening to the words. You listen carefully to the words and language usage – e.g., when you are in a customer review, you want to capture every word and the way they are used to understand what the customer is conveying holistically.

 

Biased Listening: Biased or selective listening is listening for what we want to hear. E.g., when you ask for a raise or a specific project and your boss says ‘maybe’, you believe he said yes because he didn’t say no! Or, if you believe a colleague is generally critical or non-supportive, even a curiosity driven ‘why’ from them could sound like a challenging or disagreeing ‘no’.

 

Sympathetic Listening: Is when you are feeling sympathy for the other person to an extent that you don’t focus on the words, but on your feelings of sympathy. Your inner dialogue is about how sorry you feel for the person and that gets conveyed through your body language. The person speaking feels supported by you. This type of listening may come into play when a colleague is confiding in you about their difficult personal situation.

 

Empathetic Listening: When you can put yourself in the shoes of the speaker and almost experience their feelings. The feelings may be felt through the spoken words and also other non-verbal cues. The speaker feels you are with them, you understand them. This type of listening may come into play e.g., when one of your team member is explaining why they are behind schedule due to a personal situation.

 

Informational Listening: When you are listening for capturing and retaining information. A student would (or should!) be in this mode most of the time at school. This type of listening requires a high level of focus, continuous thinking critically to what you are listening so that you are not just taking away the word but also understanding the context and meaning behind the words. This type of listening may be used when you are curious about the topic and perhaps exploring to understand more.

 

Appreciative listening. When listening from a positive mind-space, looking for reasons and elements to appreciate. E.g., when listening to your child describing their school day or listening to your employee whose efforts you want to acknowledge and provide encouragement for.

 

Critical Listening: This is when you are continually evaluating what you are hearing, with a critical and analytical assessment going on in your mind. This is somewhat similar to comprehensive listening, in that you are focusing on the words, the context and meaning behind them but the intent is not necessarily to understand but the intent is focused on finding any gaps or weaknesses in what you are hearing. This may be used when you are reviewing your team’s performance based on what you are hearing.

 

Question

Is there one listening type that you use more frequently than others?

What is the type used when a husband is listening to his wife?

 

Suggestions and value additions are most welcome

 

For regular updates, please register here

Subscribe