LISTENING

Effective Listening: Principles and

Barriers
 Miscommunication
Listening comprises of two stages:
1) Encoding & transmission of the message by
the sender
2) Decoding and providing the required
feedback by the receiver

Miscommunication happens if you are not a careful

and attentive listener, it also arises when
listening is hampered at the stage of encoding
 Listening: the art of hearing and
understanding what someone is saying

L…..I…S…..T…..E…N: art of listening

• Look
• Identify
• Set – up
• Tune in
• Examine
• Note
 Process of listening
(understand the various stages of listening)
• Selecting stage: listener selects important stimuli
and converts it into a message

• Interpreting stage: listener is engaged in decoding the

message and is faced with multiple barriers – semantic,
linguistic, psychological, emotional, or environmental

• Evaluating stage: listener adds a meaning to the

message, seeks accuracy of information. Prior
experiences, beliefs, emotions come in the way of
evaluation
•Responding stage: is important to the speaker, non-verbal
signals tell whether listener has understood or not

•Memory stage: final stage of listening, listeners can retain

only 10 - 25% of a talk, but when the speakers use good
visuals than there is higher recall rate
 Types of listening
• Passive – when the listener is physically present
and mentally absent

• Marginal – when there is too much, too little,

uninteresting or unrelated information. When you
are expected to listen something.

• Projective listening – the receiver tries to view

and assimilate contents of the presentation
according to a personal frame of mind
• Sensitive listening – receiver is able to
understand the viewpoint of the speaker in
exactly the same terms as intended
• Active listening – is maximum intake from
the communication process, receiver
absorbs all that is being said a
combination of active & sensitive makes
an ideal form of listening
Barriers to the listening process
• Content: listeners knowing too much or too
little
• Speakers: delivery , listeners attitude
towards the speaker etc
• Distance and circumstances: least effort –
when speaker is not visible, most effort
during eye to eye contact.
• Distractions: sound, light, mannerisms,
voice etc can easily distract the listener
• Mindset: attitude of the listener, the mind
set of the individual can either magnify or
diminish stimuli

• Language: ambiguity of the language,

misinterpretation when the words are
imprecise, emotional technical or based on
personal definitions established by
background, education, and experience
THANK YOU