People Management
Two Ears & Only One Mouth: Are you Listening?
Guest Author: Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., CBC
It has been said that there is a reason that God gave us two ears and only one mouth. Listening is such a crucial activity yet we devote so little effort to doing it well. It is essential for building healthy relationships and successful partnerships. Here are some important facts and techniques that can help improve your listening and interpersonal skills.
We spend 80 percent of our waking time involved in four communications tasks: reading, writing, speaking or listening.
Of these four activities, listening accounts for 50 percent of our communication time. We give little attention to this part of the communication process, simply taking it for granted that everyone knows how to listen. Listening is such a passive activity; we don t pay attention to it. In fact, most of us find the prolonged concentration required for truly effective listening too hard to maintain.
Consider this: We only retain 25 percent of what we hear. Why?
The average person speaks at about 130 words per minute. Our thinking speed is about 500 words per minute. Consequently, we jump ahead of what is actually being said. This causes our minds to wander and we are actually thinking about other things, such as what we are going to say next.
While everybody knows how to listen, not everybody practices the following effective listening techniques that can rapidly improve communications, strengthen relationships and form strong interpersonal skills for work and family success.
What is Active Listening?
The process called active listening involves the listener paying full attention to the speaker, and then summarizing or reflecting back what he or she has heard without evaluating or interpreting.
Speaker A knows what Listener B has heard, AND that Listener B is taking time to fully understand before responding.
This rarely seems to happen in our fast-paced environments where people talk over one another and interrupting is no longer the social faux pas that is was.
In active listening, it is important to learn to summarize and reflect smoothly, without appearing to mimic or repeat back in a robotic fashion. Useful phrases are:
How something is said is far more important than the actual words. This means to be a really effective listener, one must listen to the non-verbals as well. Are you tuned in to what is being said and what is not being said?
It is not enough to assume you know what the person means. Non-verbals can lead you to hear something that is not being said. Asking questions deepens the discussion and explores more of what the person means.
Some useful statements are:
Rarely do people take the time to reflect on the quality of their listening skills. In fact, the only time we may become aware of them is when there has been a breakdown in communications, and by then we are in defensive mode instead of learning mode.
How well do you listen? When was the last time you asked your spouse, your boss, or a trusted peer for feedback on your communication skills? For most of us, this is far too risky. Talking with your personal life coach can help you practice active listening and is a safe way to improve without risk.
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Published: August 30, 2004
