Though it’s perhaps the most important of our communication skills, listening is one of the most neglected. Our lack of attention to listening skills is puzzling; we spend so much of our time listening that its importance cannot be challenged. Yet the obvious explanation is that most of us believe we listen well.

In Listening Effectively, Dr Kline describes the importance of good listening in a variety of settings, from life-and-death situations to the sort of everyday situations in which you and I find ourselves all too often. He then explains how we can become the good listeners we all...

Listening is the neglected communication skill. While all of us have had instruction in reading, writing, and speaking, few have had any formal instruction in listening. This void in our education is especially interesting in light of research showing that most of us spend seven of every 10 minutes we are awake in some form of communication activity. Of these seven minutes (or 70 percent of the time we are awake), 10 percent is spent writing, 15 percent reading, 30 percent talking, and 45 percent listening.

Think of it! We spend nearly half of our communication time listening, but few...

Among the great hindrances to effective listening are the fallacies that people hold about listening. These false ideas often cause people to have inflated opinions of their own listening performance. Believing that they have no problem with listening, they make no effort to improve. Indeed, why should they? Not knowing that their listening skill is “broke,” they see no need to “fix” it. Consequently, they don’t take steps to improve. Knowing about these fallacies will assist you in avoiding this trap. Here, then, are several of the common ones.

People generally believe they are better listeners than those around them....

We said earlier that the first step in listening effectively is to recognize certain fallacies or false notions. The next step is to understand the process.

Listening is a complex process—an integral part of the total communication process, albeit a part often ignored. This neglect results largely from two factors.

First, speaking and writing (the sending parts of the communication process) are highly visible, and are more easily assessed than listening and reading (the receiving parts). And reading behavior is assessed much more frequently than listening behavior; that is, we are more often tested on what we read than...

Different situations require different types of listening. We may listen to obtain information, improve a relationship, gain appreciation for something, make discriminations, or engage in a critical evaluation.

While certain skills are basic and necessary for all types of listening (receiving, attending, and understanding), each type requires some special skills. Chapter 5 discusses those special skills and presents guidelines to improve listening behavior in all situations. But before we can fully appreciate the skills and apply the guidelines, we must understand the different types of listening.

Informative listening is the name we give to the situation where the listener's primary...

The first four chapters discussed the need for effective listening, fallacies about listening, the process of listening, and the types of listening. They provided the background you need to improve your listening skills. This chapter is a prescriptive one. It offers practical suggestions on how to be a better listener.

While there are many ways to construct a list of suggestions, we will consider them in terms of what works best in three major categories:

1. What you think about listening.

2. What you feel about listening.

3. What you do about listening.

You can learn to listen effectively; look now at the...