5 Effective Listening Barriers

Effective listening is arguably one of the most important skills to have today. Personal relationships need good listening to face complicated issues together. Business people and employees need effective listening skills to solve complex problems quickly and stay competitive. Students and professors need it to understand complex issues in their fields.

It will give us a lot of benefits.

Most of us are listening only to answer or to have a reply and not listening to understand.

Effective listening is not about the words having delivered, it requires more than hearing the sounds transmitted. We should listen for meaning and we can do this by focusing on the people and not only on words.

To help us listen and communicate better, we have listed 5 common barriers for effective listening that we should watch out every time we are in a conversation.

1. Environmental Distractions
These include cell phones, music players, TV, portable gaming consoles and others. These are the most common barriers for effective listening. Yes it is very basic but most of us still forget this very basic stuffs and I can see that they are still common in meeting areas and other gatherings.

Whenever possible, put yourself in a good environmental position for more effective listening. And for the phones and other gadgets I think it’s obvious what we need to do with them.

2. Pride
A lot of people are using their pride to take over the conversation. Pride is taking over the conversation when we think that they have nothing to learn from the other party and we are better than them.

3. Assumptions
Human mind is mysterious and it can process a lot of information especially in between conversation while the other party is still talking, we have the tendency to interrupt because we assume that we already know what the other is telling us.

4. Close mindedness
When we think that we all have the answer and that the things we know are the right answers then our mind will close for new ideas. Keep an open mind for effective listening and for effective learning.

5. Defensiveness
Defending is a primal response to feeling attacked, threatened, misunderstood or disrespected. This will normally results to never ending argument, protest, denial and blaming.
Don’t view comments and criticisms as personal attack.

Most of the barriers listed above give us the tendency to interfere with the speaker. Interfering the speaker also means that we don’t value what they are saying.

Tips to Avoid Listening Barriers

Show respect

Respect that every human beings are different. Other peoples opinions and stories may be different from ours. Showing respect is essential for effective listening.

Be sensitive

Sometimes people just needs someone who can listen to their problems and stories so preaching and acting like a problem expert in this situation can cause deeper problems.

Try to be sensitive in every situation.

Pause

Make at least a couple of seconds pause after the speaker talks before giving your reply or before starting a conversion try to set an agreement that both sides will wait for few seconds before speaking. This feel awkward at first but better than having a not so nice conversation. You can try it out until it become a habit.

Listen to Understand

Most of us are listening because we want to have a good reply. That thinking will give us a problem when it comes to communication. We should understand that the best way to persuade is with our ears.

Our main goal is to avoid those effective listening barriers listed above. We need to set aside our defenses, open our minds for new ideas and start listening not just with our ears but with our hearts because sometimes the most important message having delivered is not in the words we just heard.

We need to hear the words not being said.

Do you have other tips for effective listening? Please feel free to share it with us. We will listen..