Today, I read an interesting piece on the role of active listening in communication. We often feel that speaking is the most essential aspect of a communication but in essence, listening is the most important aspect. Many people know how to speak but few actually know how to listen. Even among the few that know how to listen, what they do is not actually listening but hearing. In this blog post, I would like to share with you my new findings on hearing and listening in communication. This topic is very helpful because a greater percent of the problems in marriages and inter-personal relationships today stems from the absence of listening. Everybody wants to be heard but nobody is ready to listen.
Hearing and listening are two separate actions that make use of the auricular organ. Even though these two actions are carried out by the ear, they are not actually the same. As a matter of fact, listening is not simply done with the ear alone but with the senses of sight and touch as well. Listening is an existential skill while hearing is a biological ability. When we listen, we process what we hear and give meaning to what we hear. Listening means accepting the speaker unconditionally and giving the speaker a space in one’s heart. Listening to someone speak to us conveys affection and understanding; declares that the speaker is appreciated and that his or her presence is taken into consideration. Hearing happens all the time and in most cases, at the subconscious level.
The purpose of listening is to understand the speaker’s point of view so as to empathize with the views that the speaker is sharing. Listening is active while hearing is passive. Active listening is when we listen attentively to the speaker, not in the bid to respond but in order to understand the speaker’s subject of discussion. Usually, when someone is talking to us, we should listen with undivided attention. But instead of doing that, we are often caught doing two things: waiting for the person to stop talking or formulating our response to them. When we do that, we are doing passive hearing. When we listen not to understand, we end up giving a wrong response. We cannot adequately respond to what we do not understand.
Sadly, we live in a time when most people do not listen to understand but listen to respond, correct or judge. Listening requires patience and attention. Lack of listening ear is one of the reasons behind several cases of misunderstanding in marriages and relationships today. People are eager to respond, correct or judge without understanding. Without understanding, we will not be accurate in our response, correction or judgment.
Lastly, there is a reason why God created us with two ears and one mouth. It is for us to listen twice as speak. We should therefore learn to listen respectfully to those speaking to us even when they are not saying what we want to hear. When we listen, we do not simply listen to the spoken words but also to the emotions, feelings and body language. That is why in communication, it is not just enough for us to hear, it is good for us to listen. To master learning and communication, it takes both hearing and listening.
#MBA21
