– Encouragement to others – when people notice that you listen to them in a non-threatening manner, they in turn loose their defensiveness and try to understand you better.
– Possession of all information – good listening skills earns you all the information you need from a speaker and thus helps you accurately in decision making.
– Improved relationships between people
– Resolution of problems – disagreements and problems can be solve easily when individuals listen to each other more carefully.
– Better understanding of people – this gives you clues of another person and tells you how they think.
When people listen effectively, they gain benefits from it which include the following:
– Cooperation
– Information
– Listening in return and
– Understanding
Assignment: Are you a good listener? Evaluate yourself with the test assignment on Page 24 of the textbook.
Perhaps sometimes the simplest way to ensure good listening is to concentrate. It is obvious people always concentrate to speakers, most of the time it’s not effective. The guidelines to give u enough aid to good listening are:
- Be prepared to listen – listening is not a passive skill, it requires hard work and active. Being prepared to listen in getting the right mental attitude requires attention, awareness and comprehension.
- Be interested and look interested – look for ways in which the message entices you.
- Keep an open mind – being open minded means you take note of your own prejudices and do not feel threatened by the message you receiving.
- Listen to the main ideas – not only the facts of the speaker, try to discriminate between fact and principle, idea or example, evidence and argument in his/her speech.
- Listen critically and try not to be bias
- Resist distractions from all sources – try to maintain your natural attention curve at all levels of the speech from start right to end. Don’t be distracted by the speakers dress, appearance, style of presentation etc
- Take notes – try to make an outline of the message especially if its very essential to you.
- Help the speaker – try to be giving listener’s responses all the time to help the speaker feel you on board with him. Examples of speakers responses:
– Nodding the head slightly and waiting
– Looking at the speaker attentively
– Remarking “I See”, Uh-huh, “Really” etc
– Repeating back the speakers last few words
- Hold back you thoughts unless the speaker invites you to talk. Try as much as possible not to interrupt the speaker.
- Reflect back what the speaker or sometimes the listeners last responses by using reflecting phrases like “you said”, “you mentioned”, “you described” etc