Four Barriers to Listening- Lisa Rooney

Here's another great article by one of my talented students, Lisa Rooney. Here Lisa covers what she call the Four Barriers to Listening. Read it and leave your comments below letting her know that you enjoy her work, and whether you agree!

Ter Scott
www.terscott.com/speaker

Lisa Rooney

Informational Listening Barriers

 

Informational listening has four barriers that can prevent a person from hearing and listening what is meant to be heard and understood correctly. The barriers include cultural, gender, history, language, and history. The cultural barrier can affect many areas of listening including different types of verbal slang, accents, and language style. This can also be affected by non verbal communication aspects like age differences, appearances, and even a person’s cultural difference alone can distract a listener.

Gender barriers can affect men and women that see the other sex as inadequate or less superior. Gender barriers can also become apparent when there is a difference in the mental thought process between men and women, which have been shown in brain tests. These brain tests show that men and women use different parts of the brain to process what is being heard when listening. Gender barriers can also be shown in misunderstandings of verbal cues like “Oh, really?”, or “That’s interesting”. These verbal cues can show a difference in meaning between men and women. Men can see them as a cue to make the conversation longer where women see them as a movement piece for a conversation.

Language barriers can include non-native speakers where the speaker can use a different language from the norm in that workplace. Another aspect of language barrier can be affected by a speaker’s volume of voice, because of their cultural background. History barriers are apparent when there are past negative experiences or annoyances. This means that the listener feels they would not learn anything from the speaker, because they have adverse feeling for the speaker.

There can also be feelings of the speakers inadequate knowledge by the listeners feelings of superiority, that can come from the speakers previous negativity or complaining. Any one of these informational listening barriers will prevent a listener from gaining the message that a speaker is portraying.

Lisa Rooney

The Definition of Listening- Shelly Riessen

From time to time, I like to publish articles by my students and clients (I teach an online Oral Communications course along with my own Public Speaking Training to corporate clients). When I see such great work, I think perhaps that my message may be getting through and of course, many already come to me with great skill and talent and seek to improve.

One such student is Shelly who wrote an article that I had to share here. I hope you learn something from it as I did.

Ter Scott
www.terscott.com/speaker

The Definition of Listening

Listening has many parts that are equally important. One important part is receiving. One receives, or gets information shared to them and they can use this information to learn. There is also constructive meaning where you may have to give information that is important that you offer specific details of what you are conversing about. Spoken language is the verbal use of words, tone and other paralanguage . Non spoken language is the use of space, gestures, and I believe even sign language could be considered non spoken language.

Two things of interest that I found from the article “Listening is Learning” (Scott) is that one must want to really hear what another person is saying before listening can occur and also hearing with our eyes to observe and not just looking. I find that many times people are distracted and do not pay particular attention to whom they are listening to. I like the suggestion to observe those you are speaking with as you may miss very important queues from the person you are talking to.

After reading the article “17 Behaviors to Avoid for Effective Listening” (Ginsberg)I really appreciated number six, don’t take over, instead take in the other person. I also liked number one, don’t react, respond coolly, objectively and non-judgmentally which I will use to aid me in my career. Both of these are things that frequently occur when people are in a hurry. I think it is good advice to slow down and pay attention. Ter Scott at: http://listenbetternow.blogspot.com suggested that I look at this article and I’m glad that I did!

I read the article “Tips for Effective Listening Skills” (Harryman)and I can associate with number four, give the right body language. This will be especially important in the medical billing and coding field as when you are trying to get information on how to perform your work correctly,

you do not want to look like you are not interested in only getting the answer to your problem, rather than learning the reason for the correct answer. I was sent from sent from Ter Scott’s Listen Better Now Blog http://listenbetternow.blogspot.com/



Ginsberg, S. (n.d.). http://www.hellomynameisblog.com. Retrieved from Hello, my name is Blog!

Harryman, W. (n.d.). http://integral-options.blogspot.com. Retrieved from Integral Options Cafe.

Scott, T. (n.d.). http://listenbetternow.blogspot.com. Retrieved from Listen Better.