Results of poor listening

In a 2-3 page paper, reflect on a situation in your professional or personal life where poor listening skills created a problem. Briefly describe the situation, then spend the bulk of your reflection analyzing what went wrong in terms of listening and how, specifically, effective listening would have made a difference. Be sure you incorporate terms from the text of effective listening skills as you analyze the situation and suggest ways it could have been improved. Your paper should be a 2-3 page paper citing specific examples and providing detailed analysis incorporation reading and textbook material. If outside sources are used, proper citation of the source should be included.CHAPTER 6 Anna Deavere Smith is a playwright, an artist in residence at MTV, a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, a performance studies teacher at Tisch School of the Arts, and a professor at New York University. She’s won high praise for her one-woman shows, Fires in the Mirror, which dealt with ethnic turmoil in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and Twilight: Los Angeles, which focused on the riots that erupted following the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King. She also played the president’s secretary in The American President and a paralegal in Philadelphia, and she had a continuing role in the television series The West Wing. Anna Deavere Smith lists another professional accomplishment on her résumé—teaching medical students at Yale and law students at New York University. You might wonder what qualifies her to instruct medical and law students. After all, she’s not a doctor or lawyer. Anna Deavere Smith is a virtuoso listener. That’s why she was hired to teach medical and law students. Doctors and lawyers need to listen, and conventional medical and legal training doesn’t teach them how to listen well. That’s why the school turned to Anna Deavere Smith. She says, “Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart.… It’s very hard work” (Arenson, 2002, p. 35). In teaching prospective doctors and attorneys how to listen well to patients and clients, Smith emphasizes the need to be fully present with others. Doctors and attorneys aren’t the only ones who need to listen well. We all do. If you think about your normal day, you’ll realize that listening—or trying to—takes up at least half your waking time (Wagner, 2001; Wolvin, 2009). You listen in classes, listen to acquaintances in casual conversation, listen to your parents during phone calls, listen to clerks in stores, listen to your supervisor and customers when you’re at work, and listen to friends when they talk to you about their lives. In this chapter, we discuss listening and how to listen effectively. First, we consider what listening involves. Next, we identify obstacles to effective listening and how we can minimize them. We also consider some common forms of no listening. The fourth section of the chapter explains different types of listening and the distinct skills needed for each. We then apply the ideas we have covered to digital and online environments. To wrap up the chapter, we identify guidelines for improving listening effectiveness. The Listening Process Listening is a complex process that involves far more than our ears. To listen well, we rely on our ears, minds, and hearts. The multifaceted aspects of listening are reflected in the Chinese character shown in Figure 6.1, which includes the symbols for the eyes, ears, and heart. Good Listening = Career Advancement The costs of poor listening in the workplace can be very high. Doctors who don’t listen fully to patients may misdiagnose or mistreat medical problems (Christensen, 2004; Nyquist, 1992; Scholz, 2005; Underwood & Adler, 2005). For this reason, an increasing number of medical practices hire communication specialists to provide listening workshops for medical practitioners. They’d rather pay the consultants’ fees than the legal fees for malpractice suits that can result from poor listening. Doctors aren’t the only ones who need to listen well. Senior executives in a number of fields identify listening as a necessary job skill more often than they identify any other skill, including managerial ability and technical competence (Darling & Dannels, 2003; Gabric & McFadden, 2001; Landrum & Harrold, 2003). Listening skill is ranked as the single most important feature of effective managers (Winsor et al., 1997). It’s also the top-ranked communication skill for accountants (Morreale, 2004). Just as listening skill is associated with career advancement, poor listening is a leading reason that some people don’t advance in their careers (Deal & Kennedy, 1999). Although we often use the words listening and hearing as if they were synonyms, actually they are different. HearingHearingThe physiological result of sound waves hitting our eardrums. Unlike listening, hearing is a passive process. Hearing The physiological result of sound waves hitting our eardrums. Unlike listening, hearing is a passive process. is a physiological activity that occurs when sound waves hit our eardrums. People who are deaf or hearing-impaired receive messages visually through lip reading or sign language. Listening has psychological and cognitive dimensions that mere hearing, or physically receiving messages, does not. The International Listening Association (1995; see the ILA website at http://www.listen.org) emphasizes that listening is an active process, which means we must exert effort to listen well. We can define listening listening A complex process that consists of being mindful, hearing, selecting and organizing information, interpreting communication, responding, and remembering. Listening is a very different process from hearing, which is simply a physiological action. Listening A complex process that consists of being mindful, hearing, selecting and organizing information, interpreting communication, responding, and remembering. Listening is a very different process from hearing, which is simply a physiological action. as an active, complex process that consists of being mindful, physically receiving messages, selecting and organizing messages, interpreting messages, responding, and remembering. 6 Mindfulness Mindfulness Being fully present in the moment. A concept from Zen Buddhism; the first step of listening and the foundation of all the other steps. Mindfulness The first step in listening is to make a decision to be mindful.