BARRIERS TO GOOD LISTENING

BARRIERS TO GOOD LISTENING

Listening is rather very difficult. It is taken for granted by parents, schools, colleges and management institutes. Although the receivers are personally present throughout, most of them are poor listeners. What are the inherent problems in the process of listening and how to overcome these barriers? A few common barriers have been listed below:

(1) Environmental barriers

These are:

(i) Physical distractions
Environmental disturbances come in the way:
 Noisy surroundings
 Loud music
 Noise of machines, office equipment etc
 Noise of road traffic including horns of vehicles

(ii) Loud talking
In some cultures people talk rather loudly. Talking loudly by persons nearby can distract a person from hearing others.

(iii) Visual distractions
A hoarding or poster on the wall may distract attention and may come in the way of catching an important point of the conversation. Similarly, speakers‟ clothes, accessories, make-up like eye shadows etc may distract listeners‟ attention.

(2) Physiological distractions

These may be:
(i) Hearing impairment – It is the case with many old persons
(ii) Hunger – It may make one inattentive
(iii) Tiredness / exhaustion from overwork – It may come in the way of listening
(iv) Pain or injury – It may divert ones‟ attention

(3) Psychological barriers

These are:

(i) Beliefs
Audiences‟ strong views on religion, politics, business area or even sex may come in the way of their paying attention to the speaker. Individuals‟ views impact on their attitude and behaviour.

(ii) Fear
If the subject being talked about is sensitive in nature as it pertains to audiences‟ fears, they may cut it off from their hearing.

(iii) Anger
If a remark by the speaker has made audience angry and upset, it will reduce their ability to absorb the message or they may miss it altogether.

(iv) Anxiety
State of health of a near or dear one may make one anxious about it while at work and the person may miss some parts of the conversation.

(v) Sad memories
While listening to a speech, if someone refers to an incident that has a lot of memories treasured by listeners, it may send them in to a reflective mood and they may miss some parts of conversation.

(4) Linguistic barriers

Also called semantic barriers, these can block ones‟ ability to listen. These are:

(i) Use of difficult words and jargons
Some speakers have an affected style of talking – they use difficult words and slang to impress rather than convey the message. Speakers must gift parcel their speech to the level of understanding of the listeners.

(ii) Speakers‟ manners and style
Much of the time, speakers‟ manners, appearance and body language are important. Politicians can, sometimes, stoop low and talk narrow, petty issues for winning local sympathy and perhaps votes but a rational listener may block his speech as hallow and worthless. He may block the message completely.

(iii) Use of words with double meaning and mispronounced words
Some speakers have a poor way of pronouncing with heavy bias of the regional spoken language. This may come in the way of catching the words and phrases correctly.

(iv) Lag time in speech
Some speakers speak very slowly. They take so much time to complete a sentence that listeners find it very difficult to slow down their thought process. They get too much of spare time when their mind flies away to other issues. Keeping focus is a lot more difficult in such cases.

(v) Different frame of mind
If speaker‟s background and area of specialization is widely different, it may come in the way of understanding the terms and phrases used in the speech. The same words may have different meaning in listeners‟ framework; consequently, there may be a gap in the understanding the message received.

(5) Socio-cultural barriers

A few important ones are:

(i) Cultural background is different
Different cultural background leading to different pronunciations and accents for speaking the same words can spoil the delivery of a message. It the recent cricket match series in Australia between the host country and Indian team, there was a piquant situation because „bastard‟ is an accepted form of communication in Australia and „monkey‟ is an accepted admonition in any heated personal discussion in India.

(ii) Personal space and public space
Some cultures permit greater personal space than others. If the same is not available even in a not-so-formal interaction, it may upset some. Even the way of addressing in different regions of the same country can create misunderstanding.

(iii) Sense of time
Experience confirms that a western visitor from USA or Europe would like to get straight in to business without significant preliminaries beyond wishing one another and getting introduced. However, a typical Asian may start with preliminaries as a warm up and may even prefer to have a cup of tea before coming to the formal part of the agenda. It is said that Japanese like to have a game of golf before sitting for any serious meeting!