Listening Habits
We listen at five different and distinct levels. How you listen to your end-users and customers will have a significant impact on your success, and that of the overall I.T. support team or, for that matter, your entire organization. As important as how you actually listen is how you are perceived to listen.COMM 1004 week 4 Listening Habits
Here are the five levels of listening:
- Ignoring
The lowest level of listening is called ignoring – not listening at all. If you are distracted by anything while talking to a user, they can get the impression that you are ignoring them. For example, while the user is speaking, you start a conversation or interject a comment with another IT support tech. You are ignoring your user. - Pretend Listening
Pretend listening is most easily explained in the face-to-face conversation. You’re talking to the other person and they have that “backpacking in Brazil” look in their eyes. On the phone it happens when you say things like “I see” and “OK,” etc. while working on an unrelated email or playing a computer game. People can tell you’re distracted. - Selective Listening
During selective listening we pay attention to the speaker as long as they are talking about things we like or agree with. If they move on to other things we slip down to pretend listening or ignore them altogether. - Attentive Listening
Attentive listening occurs when we carefully listen to the other person, but while they are speaking we are deciding whether we agree or disagree, determining whether they are right or wrong. Instead of paying close attention to the other person, we’re formulating our response to what he or she is saying. At all four of these levels it should be evident that we are listening to our own perspective, and in most cases with the intent to respond from our experience. - The fifth level of listening is Empathic Listening Empathic listening, also known as empathetic listening is the top level of listening. To be successful in providing IT support to end users, you must teach yourself to treat every call as though this is the first time you’ve ever heard this problem, even though you may have heard it many times before. Discipline yourself to see it through the eyes of the user. This is called empathic listening. Empathic listening is the highest level of listening, and the hardest to accomplish.COMM 1004 week 4 Listening Habits
Listen up! Are people really listening? What is listening and why is it important? This paper will address the viewpoint of listening skills and its outcome. Listening is an essential tool, which is one of the constructive aspects in the communication process, for communicating with other people. To listen well is a talent that is learned. However, for people to listen effectively, they would need to practice to obtain the skill. “As with any new skill, learning to listen takes effort, attention, and practice” (Stewart, 2006, p. 202). Listening skills allow people to make sense of and understand what another person is saying. In other words, listening skills allow people to identify with the meaning of what other people are talking about.