What is listening? DOC

Title	What is listening?
Author	Michael W. Purdy
Pages	9
File Size	61 KB
File Type	DOC
Total Downloads	306
Total Views	502

Summary

Listening in Everyday Life: A Personal and Professional Approach Chapter 1 WHAT IS LISTENING? Michael Purdy Points to be Addressed: • The neglect of listening. • The importance of listening in personal and professional life. • The predominance of communication time spent listening. • Defining listen...

Description

Listening in Everyday Life: A Personal and Professional Approach Chapter 1 WHAT IS LISTENING? Michael Purdy Points to be Addressed: The neglect of listening. The importance of listening in personal and professional life. The predominance of communication time spent listening. Defning listening and the components of listening. Types of listening and its use in everyday situations. Communication has two dimensions: speaking (expression), and listening (reception). For most of Western Civilization, speaking has been the form of communication regarded as most important. The first books on communication were about how to be an effective speaker. Listeners were recognized, but only as they were important to the purposes of the speaker. In fact, speaking has been championed as the way to success throughout Western history. We give honors and awards to great speakers, but how may people do you know who have been recognized for their listening talents? There is even a popular speaking course that purports to teach "how to win friends and influence people." The road to success is not through listening, they suggest. The Primacy Of Listening Today we know differently. In the chapters that follow you will discover how much power listening can provide in interacting with others in personal and professional situations. Becoming a good listener will make you more sensitive to the needs of the listener and hence, improve your competence as a speaker. It will also make you more sensitive to the needs of people in general. As Paul Tournier, Swiss Psychiatrist and author has expressed: It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need humans have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood. Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as those between couples. They are for the most part dialogues of the deaf." (Powell, p. 5) The importance of listening has been recognized by many professional organizations and influential individuals. Wolvin and Coakley cite no less than 12 major research studies by organizations which found listening to be one of the most important skills (in many cases the most important skill) for employees at every level of the organization (1988, p. 28). Another study cited in Wolvin and Coakley and conducted by the Speech Communication Association, surveyed 194 community college Career Advisory Board members (representing a wide range of occupations) to determine the members' perceptions as to the relative importance of forty–nine selected communication skills in the performance of career duties. Survey results showed that listening skills were consistently ranked as the most important communication skills for career competence (p. 28) In Academic Preparation for the World of...