Page 40 - DENG101_Communication Skills-I

Unit 4: Listening Skills

Notes
Example: You may be hearing a lot of noise during the day, but when you walk into a
classroom you listen to a teacher. You may hear a lot of music playing around you but you listen
to the song that you particularly like.

Listening is a mental activity and hearing is a physical activity. Listening includes hearing. In
hearing, we get sounds but we do not use mind. In listening, we have to understand, retain and
recall also. Listening is a natural process.

4.1 Types of Listening

Listening has the following types:
1. Attentive listening: It involves paying attention on the words that are being spoken rather
than understanding the head and heart of the person speaking. Attentive listening is said
to an effective listening.

Example: you are sitting in class and actively participating in the discussion.
2. Pretending listening: It means pretending through facial expressions that communicated
message is listened. Here, nothing like listening takes place, just hearing is there.

Example: you are sitting in a class and just pretending to listen to the lecture.
3. Selective listening: It means not taking the message as it is, but adding or deducting
according to one’s own whims and wishes i.e., selecting the ‘desired’ part and ignoring the
‘undesired’ part of the message.

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Caution This type of listening leads to strengthen one’s own beliefs and restrains further
learning. It usually happens in selective listening that the listener tries to identify himself

with the situation either partially or totally and attempts to find his autobiography in the
lives of others.
4. Empathic listening: It involves listening not only through ears but also through eyes and
heart. It is listening intently and intensively to understand the person fully, deeply both
emotionally as well as intellectually. Some people feel that empathic listening is risky as
it means becoming open and vulnerable to other person’s infl uence, while other feel that
empathy for the speaker is an essential requirement of effective listening.
5. Listening for mutual creativity: It is a higher form of listening. The listening to inspire
mutual creativity is responsible for many breakthroughs in the world. Listening for mutual
creativity is rooted in two questions. What do you most want? And how can I help you get
what you most want? To listen in total support of other people, to be for their goals and
aspirations in your own body, mind and spirit – may well be the greatest gift you can give
your fellow human beings.

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Caution This listening is synergistic in nature. The terms ‘synergy’ means that whole is
greater than sum of its parts. Listening for creativity not only smoothes but accelerates the
understanding process through communion of hearts and minds. This listening relieves
the persons from stress and strain, soothes their hearts and helps them to bring the idea
lying in the crust of their subconscious minds to the conscious surface. Thus, it leads to
mutual creativity.

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