Chapter 5 Sample answers for in-book discussion questions

1. Discuss the benefits of mindful listening skills.

There are many benefits of mindful listening. First, being an effective listener is important to the speaker who is communicating with you. By listening, we are able to connect better with one another, which can strengthen interpersonal relationships. People who are mindful listeners are able to understand, remember, evaluate, and help others who are communicating with them. Mindful listeners provide the most appropriate responses to meet the needs of the speaker. Second, effective listening is an important communication skill that is beneficial for job and career success, productivity, and organizational effectiveness. Mindful listeners are perceived as having effective leadership skills in the workplace. Third, effective listening allows us to recognize and understand our own strengths and weaknesses in our interpersonal relationships.

3. Why is mindful listening not an easy communication task? Describe the four barriers to listening.

Mindful listening is not an easy communication task for various reasons. The process of listening is a perceptual one, in which each person uniquely attends to, understands, and remembers interactions with others differently. Because communication is transactional—we are not just listening during an interaction—we are selecting what to pay attention to and what not to. Depending on our mood, we may be preoccupied with our own “issues” while someone is talking, or we may not be interested in what is being discussed.

The four barriers discussed in the chapter are information overload, personal concerns, rapid thought, and noise. Information overload means that the amount of information that we are often required to attend to, understand, and recall can be overwhelming. Too much information can cause us to stop listening effectively. Personal concerns often preoccupy our attention when others are talking. We may shift our attention to something else related to our life, such as thinking about the weekend, what to make for dinner, etc. Rapid thought is a barrier to effective listening because we are able to think faster than we can talk. This barrier causes us to shift our attention while the speaker is catching up. For example, when someone is explaining how to complete a task that you already know how to complete, your mind might wander and hope they “get to the point” so the conversation can move on. Finally, both physical and psychological noise are barriers to effective communication. How we feel, the kind of day we are having, and who we are speaking to are important factors in how well we listen. Physical noise, such as loud music or a busy hallway, can also distract our attention from the speaker.

5. Explain how things can go wrong in each of the five elements of listening.

The five elements of listening include hearing, attending, understanding, remembering, and responding. In each of these elements, there are opportunities for listening to go wrong. Here is an example for each element.

• Hearing: A physical impairment can prevent a person from hearing sound adequately. Therefore, spending more time trying to hear can become exhausting and impact listening behaviour.
• Attending: If we are in a loud, busy room while communicating with someone, we can be easily distracted by all the noise and may not attend well to what the speaker is saying.
• Understanding: Messages can be perceived and understood differently. I might understand someone’s apology as sincere, but another person might know more about the situation and find the apology insincere.
• Remembering: It can be difficult to remember an overload of new information from someone. Our memory can fail us if we are not interested in what a person is telling us, and we can forget information we want to remember if we don’t rehearse it.
• Responding: There are many types of responding styles that can be misused or cause barriers to effective communication. Providing advice to someone who is just looking for someone to listen can be ineffective. Being defensive in responding can cause the speaker to become defensive himself.