LISTENING IS NOT TAUGHT

LISTENING IS NOT TAUGHT

As a part of growing and development through learning and education, children are taught reading, writing and even speaking. They are rarely taught how to listen, now considered to be the most essential skill for managers and leaders. It is ignored in high schools and even in business schools where full credit subject of business communication skills is taught.

Now many companies are training their managers and leaders in the art of listening to help them incorporate listening as an important skill in their personality – it is a lot of hard work. Speaking (and teaching) is not as difficult as listening (and learning).

Listening is much more – it is making conscious efforts to hear the speaker. It is matching of the mental faculties of the sender and the receiver. It is the understanding of the intent of total message as sent by the sender. When the speaker asks if the audience understood the message, listeners‟ nod is for the complete message including unspoken words, gestures and expressions of the speaker.

Listening is an accurate perception of all that is being presented. Listening is a vital part of the entire process of communication. The effectiveness of communication is, in fact, determined by the extent to which listening and understanding takes place after an interaction. It consists of two stages:

 Encoding and transmission of the message by the sender
 Decoding and providing the required feedback by the receiver

Listening is said to have taken place if there is satisfactory execution of both the stages. If the message has been understood in exactly the same way as was intended by the sender, it can be said that listening has taken place accurately. However, if there are discrepancies between the intent of message sent and the way it has been perceived, listening is deficient and the communication has not been effective.