Listening skills

1. Listening
 Listening vs. hearing
 Listening = Hearing + deliberate and
purposeful act of the mind
 Most crucial skill required for becoming a
successful manager
 Improves work quality and boosts
productivity
 Helps to improve speaking

2. What is listening?
“The process of receiving,
constructing meaning from, and
responding to spoken and/or
nonverbal messages.”

3. Types of listening
People listen because:
They want some info from the speaker
Or they enjoy what they are hearing
 Discriminative L
 Comprehensive L
 Critical L
 Active L

4. To be a better listener..
 Be motivated to listen
 Be prepared to listen
 Be objective
 Be alert to all cues
 Make good use of the Thinking-speaking time
difference
 Use feedback
 Practice listening
 Use verbal and nonverbal cues to encourage the
speaker

5. How to ensure better listening
 Try to empathise
 Adjust your delivery
 Utilise feedback
 Be clear
 Be interesting

6. Non-verbal Communication
 All those messages expressed other than
by linguistic means
 More impact in conveying meaning than
verbal C

7. Characteristics of Nonverbal C
 Primarily communicates emotions,
attitudes
 Nonverbal cues substitutes for/
contradicts/ emphasizes/ regulates verbal
messages
 NV cues are often ambiguous
 NV cues are continuous
 NV cues are considered more reliable
 They are culture bound

8. Components of NV C
 Paralanguage: voice qualities, voice
qualifiers, vocal characteristics, vocal
segregates
 Kinesics: posture, gestures, facial
expressions
 Proxemics
 Use of time
 Mode of dress- object communication

9. Studying nonverbal C
 Haptics - study of touching: Handshakes,
holding hands, shoulder pat
 Chronemics – study of the use of
time:punctuality, willingness to wait, and
interactions.
 Oculesics – study of the role of eyes in NV C.
People use their eyes to indicate their interest.
Done through eye contact.
 Paralanguage – the study of nonverbal cues of
the voice like tone, pitch, accent etc.

10. More about Body Language -
Kinesics
 Kinesics = body movements
 Facial expressions,eye
movements/contact, gestures, body
shape/posture, appearance
 Reflection of thought, feelings, emotion
 Nodding head, blinking eyes, waving
hands, shrugging shoulders – sends
signals and messages louder than words

11. Neuro linguistic
programming11.10.07
 The word can be broken down to three distinct words:
1. neuro
2. linguistic and
3. programming.
1. Neuro refers to the brain and neural network that feeds into
the brain. Neurons or nerve cells are the working units used by
the nervous system to send, receive, and store signals that add
up to information.
2. Linguistics refer to the content, both verbal and non-verbal,
that moves across and through these pathways.
3. Programming is the way the content or signal is manipulated to
convert it into useful information. The brain may direct the
signal, sequence it, change it based on our prior experience, or
connect it to some other experience we have stored in our
brain to convert it into thinking patterns and behaviors that are
the essence of our experience of life.

12. Poor listening
 Letters may have to be retyped
 Meetings rescheduled
 Shipments rerouted
 Performance affected

13. Barriers to effective listening
 Physiological barriers
 Environmental barriers
 Attitudinal barriers
 Poor listening habits
 Lack of common experiences