Which listening barrier are women most susceptible

Everybody interprets things differently. Experiencing incongruent cues. As speakers, and as listeners, we are constantly and simultaneously sending cues and receiving them from other people. Try to be consistent with your verbal cues and your body language. Do not say one thing and express something else through your body language. Be aware of how your non-verbal communication relates to your spoken words. If someone else seems to be sending a double message — by saying one thing and expressing something else in their body language — ask for clarification.

Strategies for accurate perception Analyze your own perceptions. Question your perceptions, and think about how they are formed. Check in with others around you regularly, and be aware of assumptions that you are making. Seek additional information and observations. You may just need to ask people if your perceptions are accurate. Work on improving your perception. Increase your awareness of barriers to perception, and which ones you tend towards.

Check in with yourself regularly. Focus on others. Develop your ability to focus on other people, and understand them better by trying to gather knowledge about them, listening to them actively, and imagining how you would feel in their situation. Barriers to effective verbal communication Lacking clarity.

Avoid abstract, overly-formal language, colloquialisms, and jargon, which obscure your message more than they serve to impress people.

Using stereotypes and generalizations. Speakers who make unqualified generalizations undermine their own clarity and credibility. Be careful not to get stuck in the habit of using stereotypes, or making generalizations about complex systems or situations.

Try to be sensitive to the complexities of situations, rather than viewing the world in black and white. Jumping to conclusions.

Confusing facts with inferences is a common tendency. Do not assume you know the reasons behind events, or that certain facts necessarily have certain implications. Make sure you have all the information you can get, and then speak clearly about the facts versus the meanings or interpretations you attach to those. Dysfunctional responses. Ignoring or not responding to a comment or question quickly undermines effective communication. Likewise, responding with an irrelevant comment -- one that isn't connected to the topic at hand -- will quash genuine communication.

Interrupting others while they are speaking also creates a poor environment for communication. Lacking confidence. Lacking confidence can be a major barrier to effective communication. Shyness, difficulty being assertive, or low self-worth can hinder your ability to make your needs and opinions known. Also, a lack of awareness of your own rights and opportunities in a given situation can prevent you from expressing your needs openly.

Strategies for effective verbal communication Focus on the issue, not the person. Try not to take everything personally, and similarly, express your own needs and opinions in terms of the job at hand. Solve problems rather than attempt to control others. For example, rather than ignoring a student who routinely answers questions in class with inappropriate tangents, speak with the student outside of class about how this might disrupt the class and distract other students.

Be genuine rather than manipulative. Rationalization is another form of distorted listening through which we adapt, edit, or skew incoming information to fit our existing schemata. We may, for example, reattribute the cause of something to better suit our own beliefs. This can easily happen if we join a conversation late, overhear part of a conversation, or are being a lazy listener and miss important setup and context. Passing along distorted information can lead to negative consequences ranging from starting a false rumor about someone to passing along incorrect medical instructions from one health-care provider to the next.

Last, the addition of material to a message is a type of distorted listening that actually goes against our normal pattern of listening, which involves reducing the amount of information and losing some meaning as we take it in.

Addition of material is also a common feature of gossip. Eavesdropping is a bad listening practice that involves a calculated and planned attempt to secretly listen to a conversation. There is a difference between eavesdropping on and overhearing a conversation. Many if not most of the interactions we have throughout the day occur in the presence of other people.

People eavesdrop for a variety of reasons. People might think another person is talking about them behind their back or that someone is engaged in illegal or unethical behavior. Sometimes people eavesdrop to feed the gossip mill or out of curiosity. Consequences for eavesdropping may include an angry reaction if caught, damage to interpersonal relationships, or being perceived as dishonest and sneaky. Additionally, eavesdropping may lead people to find out information that is personally upsetting or hurtful, especially if the point of the eavesdropping is to find out what people are saying behind their back.

Aggressive listening is a bad listening practice in which people pay attention in order to attack something that a speaker says. Aggressive listeners like to ambush speakers in order to critique their ideas, personality, or other characteristics. Such behavior often results from built-up frustration within an interpersonal relationship. Unfortunately, the more two people know each other, the better they will be at aggressive listening. Take the following exchange between long-term partners:.

I think it would be really good to be able to go pick our own tomatoes and peppers and cilantro to make homemade salsa. But do you ever follow through with it? Narcissistic listening is a form of self-centered and self-absorbed listening in which listeners try to make the interaction about them. Narcissistic listeners redirect the focus of the conversation to them by interrupting or changing the topic.

When the focus is taken off them, narcissistic listeners may give negative feedback by pouting, providing negative criticism of the speaker or topic, or ignoring the speaker. You can see this narcissistic combination in the following interaction:. Why are you complaining?

And you should hear the way he talks to me in front of the other employees. Narcissistic listeners, given their self-centeredness, may actually fool themselves into thinking that they are listening and actively contributing to a conversation. It is generally more competent to withhold sharing our stories until the other person has been able to speak and we have given the appropriate support and response. Do you have a friend or family member who repeats stories?

Although it is a bad listening practice, we all understandably engage in pseudo-listening from time to time. We should avoid pseudo-listening when possible and should definitely avoid making it a listening habit. When interrupting becomes a habit or is used in an attempt to dominate a conversation, then it is a barrier to effective listening. Many people admit that they could stand to improve their listening skills.

This section will help us do that. In this section, we will learn strategies for developing and improving competence at each stage of the listening process. We will also define active listening and the behaviors that go along with it. Looking back to the types of listening discussed earlier, we will learn specific strategies for sharpening our critical and empathetic listening skills. In keeping with our focus on integrative learning, we will also apply the skills we have learned in academic, professional, and relational contexts and explore how culture and gender affect listening.

To improve listening at the receiving stage, o prepare yourself to listen, o discern between intentional messages and noise, o concentrate on stimuli most relevant to your listening purpose s orgoal s , o be mindful of the selection and attention process as much as possible,.

To improve listening at the interpreting stage, o identify main points and supporting points; o use contextual clues from the person or environment to discern additional meaning;. To improve listening at the recalling stage, o use multiple sensory channels to decode messages and make more. To improve listening at the evaluating stage, o separate facts, inferences, and judgments; o be familiar with and able to identify persuasive strategies and fallacies of.

To improve listening at the responding stage, o ask appropriate clarifying and follow-up questions and paraphrase. Active listening refers to the process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening behaviors with positive cognitive listening practices. Active listening can help address many of the environmental, physical, cognitive, and personal barriers to effective listening that we discussed earlier.

The behaviors associated with active listening can also enhance informational, critical, and empathetic listening. Being an active listener starts before you actually start receiving a message. Active listeners make strategic choices and take action in order to set up ideal listening conditions. Physical and environmental noises can often be managed by moving locations or by manipulating the lighting, temperature, or furniture.

When possible, avoid important listening activities during times of distracting psychological or physiological noise. For college students, who often have some flexibility in their class schedules, knowing when you best listen can help you make strategic choices regarding what class to take when. In terms of cognitive barriers to effective listening, we can prime ourselves to listen by analyzing a listening situation before it begins.

For example, you could ask yourself the following questions:. Effective listeners must work to maintain focus as much as possible and refocus when attention shifts or fades. One way to do this is to find the motivation to listen. If you can identify intrinsic and or extrinsic motivations for listening to a particular message, then you will be more likely to remember the information presented.

Ask yourself how a message could impact your life, your career, your intellect, or your relationships. This can help overcome our tendency toward selective attention. We will learn much more about establishing relevance, organizing a message, and gaining the attention of an audience in public speaking contexts later in the book.

Given that we can process more words per minute than people can speak, we can engage in internal dialogue, making good use of our intrapersonal communication, to become a better listener. Three possibilities for internal dialogue include covert coaching, self-reinforcement, and covert questioning; explanations and examples of each follow:Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice London: Routledge, , A more direct way to indicate active listening is to reference previous statements made by the speaker.

Being able to summarize what someone said to ensure that the topic has been satisfactorily covered and understood or being able to segue in such a way that validates what the previous speaker said helps regulate conversational flow. Asking probing questions is another way to directly indicate listening and to keep a conversation going, since they encourage and invite a person to speak more.

You can also ask questions that seek clarification and not just elaboration. Speakers should present complex information at a slower speaking rate than familiar information, but many will not. Remember that your nonverbal feedback can be useful for a speaker, as it signals that you are listening but also whether or not you understand.

If a speaker fails to read your nonverbal feedback, you may need to follow up with verbal communication in the form of paraphrased messages and clarifying questions. Being an active listener means knowing when to maintain our role as listener and resist the urge to take a conversational turn.

Research shows that people with higher social status are more likely to interrupt others, so keep this in mind and be prepared for it if you are speaking to a high- status person, or try to resist it if you are the high-status person in an interaction.

Note-taking can also indicate active listening. Translating information through writing into our own cognitive structures and schemata allows us to better interpret and assimilate information.

It would be fairly awkward to take notes during a first date or a casual exchange between new coworkers. But many people would rather someone jot down notes instead of having to respond to follow-up questions on information that was already clearly conveyed.

This seems important. The following statistic illustrates the importance of listening in academic contexts: four hundred first-year students were given a listening test before they started classes. At the end of that year, 49 percent of the students with low scores were on academic probation, while only 4 percent of those who scored high were. Martha S. Anne S. Algier and Keith W.

One of the most difficult challenges for teachers is eliciting good listening behaviors from their students, and the method of instruction teachers use affects how a student will listen and learn.

Melissa L. Beall et al. Given that there are different learning styles, we know that to be effective, teachers may have to find some way to appeal to each learning style. Although teachers often make this attempt, it is also not realistic or practical to think that this practice can be used all the time. Therefore, students should also think of ways they can improve their listening competence, because listening is an active process that we can exert some control over.

The following tips will help you listen more effectively in the classroom:. What are some listening challenges that you face in the classroom? What can you do to overcome them? Some listening scholars note that critical listening represents the deepest level of listening. James J. Critical listening is also important in a democracy that values free speech. The US Constitution grants US citizens the right to free speech, and many people duly protect that right for you and me.

Since people can say just about anything they want, we are surrounded by countless messages that vary tremendously in terms of their value, degree of ethics, accuracy, and quality. Therefore it falls on us to responsibly and critically evaluate the messages we receive. Being able to critically evaluate messages helps us have more control over and awareness of the influence such people may have on us. In order to critically evaluate messages, we must enhance our critical-listening skills. Some critical-listening skills include distinguishing between facts and inferences, evaluating supporting evidence, discovering your own biases, and listening beyond the message.

Hayakawa and Alan R. Hayakawa, Language in. Thought and Action, 5th ed. This is an ideal that is not always met in practice, so a critical listener should also make these distinctions, since the speaker may not. Since facts are widely agreed- on conclusions, they can be verified as such through some extra research.

Take care in your research to note the context from which the fact emerged, as speakers may take a statistic or quote out of context, distorting its meaning. Inferences are not as easy to evaluate, because they are based on unverifiable thoughts of a speaker or on speculation.

Inferences are usually based at least partially on something that is known, so it is possible to evaluate whether an inference was made carefully or not. In this sense, you may evaluate an inference based on several known facts as more credible than an inference based on one fact and more speculation.

Distinguishing among facts and inferences and evaluating the credibility of supporting material are critical-listening skills that also require good informational-listening skills.

In more formal speaking situations, speakers may cite published or publicly available sources to support their messages. For example, a national newspaper would likely be more credible on a major national event than a tabloid magazine or an anonymous blog. In regular interactions, people also have sources for their information but are not as likely to note them within their message.

Discovering your own biases can help you recognize when they interfere with your ability to fully process a message. Last, to be a better critical listener, think beyond the message. A good critical listener asks the following questions: What is being said and what is not being said?

In whose interests are these claims being made? These questions take into account that speakers intentionally and unintentionally slant, edit, or twist messages to make them fit particular perspectives or for personal gain. Although we like to think that we are most often persuaded through logical evidence and reasoning, we are susceptible to persuasive shortcuts that rely on the credibility or likability of a speaker or on our emotions rather than the strength of his or her evidence.

Richard E. Petty and John T. So keep a check on your emotional involvement to be aware of how it may be influencing your evaluation. Also, be aware that how likable, attractive, or friendly you think a person is may also lead you to more positively evaluate his or her messages. In just the past twenty years, the rise of political fact checking occurred as a result of the increasingly sophisticated rhetoric of politicians and their representatives.

As political campaigns began to adopt communication strategies employed by advertising agencies and public relations firms, their messages became more ambiguous, unclear, and sometimes outright misleading.

While there are numerous political fact-checking sources now to which citizens can turn for an analysis of political messages, it is important that we are able to use our own critical-listening skills to see through some of the political spin that now characterizes politics in the United States. Since we get most of our political messages through the media rather than directly from a politician, the media is a logical place to turn for guidance on fact checking.

Unfortunately, the media is often manipulated by political communication strategies as well. Sometimes media outlets transmit messages even though a critical evaluation of the message shows that it lacks credibility, completeness, or worth.

Journalists who engage in political fact checking have been criticized for putting their subjective viewpoints into what is supposed to be objective news coverage. He also notes that outright lies are much less common in politics than are exaggeration, spin, and insinuation. This fact puts much of political discourse into an ethical gray area that can be especially difficult for even professional fact checkers to evaluate.

Some fact-checking resources. The caution here for any critical listener is to be aware of our tendency to gravitate toward messages with which we agree and avoid or automatically reject messages with which we disagree.

Exploring the fact-check websites above can help expose ourselves to critical evaluation that we might not otherwise encounter. Empathetic listening is a caring, a love of the wisdom to be found in others whoever they may be. This quote conveys that empathetic listening is more philosophical than the other types of listening. It requires that we are open to subjectivity and that we engage in it because we genuinely see it as worthwhile.

Combining active and empathetic listening leads to active-empathetic listening. During active-empathetic listening a listener becomes actively and emotionally involved in an interaction in such a way that it is conscious on the part of the listener and perceived by the speaker.

To be a better empathetic listener, we need to suspend or at least attempt to suppress our judgment of the other person or their message so we can fully attend to both. In addition, speaking the words of someone else in our own way can help evoke within us the feelings that the other person felt while saying them. Active-empathetic listening is more than echoing back verbal messages. Therapists, for example, are often taught to adopt a posture and tone similar to their patients in order to build rapport and project empathy.

Empathetic listening can be worthwhile, but it also brings challenges. In terms of costs, empathetic listening can use up time and effort. Empathetic listening can.

While listening can be therapeutic, it is not appropriate for people without training and preparation to try to serve as a therapist. Some people have chronic issues that necessitate professional listening for the purposes of evaluation, diagnosis, and therapy.

Lending an ear is different from diagnosing and treating. If you have a friend who is exhibiting signs of a more serious issue that needs attention, listen to the extent that you feel comfortable and then be prepared to provide referrals to other resources that have training to help.

Active, critical, and empathetic listening skills can be helpful in a variety of contexts. Understanding the role that listening plays in professional, relational, cultural, and gendered contexts can help us more competently apply these skills. Whether we are listening to or evaluating messages from a supervisor, parent, or intercultural conversational partner, we have much to gain or lose based on our ability to apply listening skills and knowledge in various contexts.

Listening and organizational-communication scholars note that listening is one of the most neglected aspects of organizational-communication research. This lack of a focus on listening persists, even though we know that more effective listening skills have been shown to enhance sales performance and that managers who exhibit good listening skills help create open communication climates that can lead to increased feelings of supportiveness, motivation, and productivity.

Specifically, empathetic listening and active listening can play key roles in organizational communication. Managers are wise to enhance their empathetic listening skills, as being able to empathize with employees contributes to a positive communication climate. Active listening among organizational members also promotes involvement and increases motivation, which leads to more cohesion and enhances the communication climate. Organizational scholars have examined various communication climates specific to listening.

Listening environment refers to characteristics and norms of an organization and its members that contribute to expectations for and perceptions about listening. Positive listening environments are perceived to be more employee centered, which can improve job satisfaction and cohesion.

But how do we create such environments? Positive listening environments are facilitated by the breaking down of barriers to concentration, the reduction of noise, the creation of a shared reality through shared language, such as similar jargon or a shared vision statement , intentional spaces that promote listening, official opportunities that promote listening, training in listening for all employees, and leaders who model good listening practices and praise others who are successful listeners.

Policies and practices that support listening must go hand in hand. As a listening coach, he offers training and resources to help people in various career paths increase their listening competence.

For people who are very committed to increasing their listening skills, the International Listening Association has now endorsed a program to become a Certified Listening Professional CLP , which entails advanced independent study, close work with a listening mentor, and the completion of a written exam.

There are also training programs to help with empathetic listening that are offered through the Compassionate Listening Project. These programs evidence the growing focus on the importance of listening in all professional contexts. Scholarly research has consistently shown that listening ability is a key part of leadership in professional contexts and competence in listening aids in decision making.

A survey sent to hundreds of companies in the United States found that poor listening skills create problems at all levels of an organizational hierarchy, ranging from entry-level positions to CEOs.

By reading this book, you are already taking an important step toward improving a variety of communication competencies, including listening, and you can always take it upon yourself to further your study and increase your skills in a particular area to better prepare yourself to create positive communication climates and listening environments.

Electronic presentations can incorporate photographs, sounds, charts, guided outlines, and other features to help maintain audience attention and clarify or demonstrate complicated ideas.

An engaged audience member is more likely to pay attention to the material and therefore listen more actively to a presentation. When not used properly, however, technology can become a barrier to effective listening. Poor or outdated equipment can malfunction, causing disruptions to the listening process. If a conversation is taking place via an electronic medium, problems with technology like a buzzing phone line or slow Internet connection can likewise limit communication.

Beyond technology being utilized by the presented, technology used by the listener can also hinder effective listening. Taking lecture notes on a laptop is convenient, but it is also convenient to check Facebook or the latest sports scores. Cell phones and tablets can provide similar distractions. If someone in the audience is talking or texting during the speech, technology becomes a major distraction for everyone involved.

Ultimately, the onus lies with both the speaker and the listener to anticipate potential technological problems or distractions to the listening process, and to do what they can to eliminate or mitigate their effects. Technology should simplify communication, not make it more complicated. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Search for:. Barriers to Listening.

Culture Cultural differences between listeners and speakers can create barriers to effective communication. Important emails sometimes end up in the spam folder, and she never sees them. Because of this, Holly sometimes overlooks emails from Fred and is left unaware of important customer information. In a professional setting, always maintain a moderate distance from the people you are speaking with. When it comes to public speeches in smaller spaces, you can consider organizing a virtual meeting instead.

Exchange separate offices and cubicles for open tables that make it easier to communicate in person. Alternatively, use threads in your chat app for meetings and focused discussions, instead of trying to talk with everyone in person.

For example, if the office is too cold for one colleague, but too hot for the other, dress accordingly — wear short sleeves or bring a jacket. First, discuss the best ways to manage background noise. If the problem are noisy colleagues, talk with them — try to find a suitable noise-reducing solution together.

Whenever you want to introduce a new channel of communication, talk about your expectations with the team. Solicit opinions about app use and answer all questions. Have public documentation about proper app use. Whenever you have a technical issue, let the rest of the team know — and give alternatives to how they can reach you if necessary. Perceptual barriers to effective team communication represent the mental blocks people may have that influence their perceptions about certain people, situations, topics, or events.

These perceptions form intra-personal barriers that influence how people send, receive, or interpret messages in conversations. Perceptual barriers to effective communication include perceptual filters , but also nonverbal language. Perceptual filters to effective communication include our thoughts, assumptions, preferences, values, and attitudes. They represent lenses through which we view people, situations, topics, or events. She just finished her specialization, and is the daughter of the head of the hospital.

Erica is also a staunch supporter of new surgical research — research her colleagues are still wary of. Because of their assumptions and differences in values, the rest of the surgical team tends to ignore Erica during breaks.

Nonverbal facial expressions, triggers, and cues represent the body language people emit while communicating. This body language may be connected with the intended meaning of the messages the communicator is trying to convey. But, it may also be intentionally or unintentionally misleading.

In line with that, other people may perceive the nonverbal language of their fellow communicators correctly — or not. Recently, a customer has returned a valuable shipment, asking for a full refund.

The reason cited is that a customer support specialist led her on about the color of the dresses ordered. Julia, the head of customer support, calls up Noah and Larissa to discuss the matter and find the person responsible. During the separate interviews, both Noah and Larissa deny it was them — but both also act guilty according to research-based common traits of liars :. Before declaring that you know exactly what someone thinks, feels, knows, or believes, gain the relevant information.

Observe how they behave, respond, and act, before making conclusions. Yes, observing nonverbal language can help you decide whether someone is lying, trying to conceal information, or in any way trying to mislead you. Emotional barriers to effective communication represent the emotions that may hold you back from communicating what you want to your teammates.

These emotions may also hold you back from listening to others attentively and accepting their point of view on matters discussed.

These key emotional barriers include anger , pride , and anxiety. Anger is an emotional barrier to communication that actually affects how your brain processes information. The people you are projecting your anger to are likely to become defensive, scared, or even feel hurt.

As a result, people are less likely to contact you in case of an emergency — even if you objectively are the best person to solve the problem. The project she is currently working on is late, and she has organized an emergency meeting to discuss what can be done to speed up and re-organize work. A couple of teammates become defensive, and Ginny angrily rejects their explanations. She even dismisses the fact-based explanations that show it was Ginny herself who disregarded the original deadline estimates and defined an overly ambitious project deadline on her own.

At one point, Ginny even snaps at a couple of teammates — she publicly questions their university degrees. After the meeting, the team goes back to work.

They may work with more focus in the future, but they now feel wary of Ginny, and are unlikely to ask for her help in the future — even if they feel that they need to. Pride is an emotional barrier to communication that inhibits healthy communication in several ways. For one, pride as an emotion implies you take pride in what you say and do.

This, in turn, implies, you talk more than you listen — and active listening is an important skill of effective communicators. As a result, teammates become wary of inviting you to brainstorming sessions — because your idea always needs to be the best one, or else you become difficult to work with. His accomplishments are celebrated the longest, and he never makes mistakes at least, not mistakes he owns up to. As a result, his teammates have come to dread daily meetings.

They tend to let Oliver talk, and often feel unmotivated to try to outtalk him — even if they have something important to say or ask. Anxiety is another emotional barrier to effective communication — one that can hurt your communication skills and effectiveness.

Moreover, anxiety may even push you to avoid certain social situations, even in a professional setting. Daniel is an HR specialist in charge of recruiting, screening, interviewing, and onboarding workers.