Several years back there was a public service announcement that ran on television.

It talked about the importance of good listening skills and the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physical ability while listening is a skill. Listening skills allow one to make sense of and understand what another person is saying. In other words, listening skills allow you to understand what someone is "talking about".

In 1991 the United States Department of Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identified five competencies and three foundation skills that are essential for those entering the workforce. Listening skills were among the foundation skills SCANS identified. Why You Need Good Listening Skills

Good listening skills make workers more productive. The ability to listen carefully will allow you to:

* better understand assignments and what is expected of you;

* build rapport with co-workers, bosses, and clients;

* show support;

* work better in a team-based environment;

* resolve problems with customers, co-workers, and bosses;

* answer questions; and

* find underlying meanings in what others say.

How to Listen Well The following tips will help you listen well. Doing these things will also demonstrate to the speaker that you are paying attention. While you may in fact be able to listen while looking down at the floor, doing so may imply that you are not.

* maintain eye contact;

* don't interrupt the speaker;

* sit still;

* nod your head;

* lean toward the speaker;

* repeat instructions and ask appropriate questions when the speaker has finished.

A good listener knows that being attentive to what the speaker doesn't say is as important as being attentive to what he does say. Look for non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and posture to get the full gist of what the speaker is telling you. Barriers to Listening Beware of the following things that may get in the way of listening.

* bias or prejudice;

* language differences or accents;

* noise;

* worry, fear, or anger; and

* lack of attention span.

Listening Starts Early If you have children you know what it's like to feel like you're talking to a wall. Kids have an uncanny ability to appear to be listening to you while actually paying no attention at all. While this is something that may pass with age it is important to help children develop good listening skills early. They will do better in school and you will keep your sanity. As the SCANS report points out, good listening skills will prepare children to eventually succeed in the workforce.

* When you tell your child to do something, ask him to repeat your instructions;

* Teach your child to maintain eye contact when talking to or listening to someone;

* Read out loud to your child and then engage her in a conversation about what you have read; and

* Engage your child in age-appropriate activities that promote good listening skills.

Active listening is a way of "listening for meaning" in which the listener checks with the speaker to see that a statement has been correctly heard and understood. The goal of active listening is to improve mutual understanding. When interacting, people often are not listening attentively to one another. They may be distracted, thinking about other things, or thinking about what they are going to say next, (the latter case is particularly true in conflict situations or disagreements).

Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding. It focuses attention on the speaker. Suspending ones own frame of reference and suspending judgement, are important in order to fully attend to the speaker.

Tactics It is important to observe the other person's behaviour and body language. Having the ability to interpret a person's body language allows the listener to develop a more accurate understanding of the speaker's words.[1] Having heard, the listener may then paraphrase the speakers words. It is important to note that the listener is not necessarily agreeing with the speakersimply stating what was said. In emotionally charged communications, the listener may listen for feelings. Thus, rather than merely repeating what the speaker has said, the active listener might describe the underlying emotion (you seem to feel angry or you seem to feel frustrated, is that because?).

Individuals in conflict often contradict one another. This has the effect of denying the validity of the other persons position. Either party may react defensively, and they may lash out or withdraw. On the other hand, if one finds

that the other party understands, an atmosphere of cooperation can be created. This increases the possibility of collaborating and resolving the conflict.

In the book Leader Effectiveness Training, Thomas Gordon, who coined the term "active listening",[2] states "Active listening is certainly not complex. Listeners need only restate, in their own language, their impression of the expression of the sender. ... Still, learning to do Active Listening well is a rather difficult task..."[3]

A four step process (termed "Nonviolent Communication" or "NVC") was conceived by Marshall Rosenberg which can help facilitate the process of active listening. "When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed [and requested] rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listeningto ourselves as well as othersNVC fosters respect, attentiveness, and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart."[4] Rosenberg further clarifies the intricacy of perception and adaptiveness of what he calls "deep listening" by saying; "While I conveniently refer to NVC as a process or language, it is possible to express all four pieces of the model without uttering a single word. The essence of NVC is to be found in our consciousness of these four components, not in the actual words that are exchanged."[5] Use

Active listening is used in a wide variety of situations, including public interest advocacy, community organizing, tutoring,[6] medical workers talking to patients,

[7] HIV counseling,[8] helping suicidal persons,[9] management,[10] counseling

and journalistic settings. In groups it may aid in reaching consensus. It may also be used in casual conversation to build understanding, though this can be interpreted as condescending.

A listener can use several degrees of active listening, each resulting in a different quality of communication. The Active Listening Chart below shows the three main degrees of listening: Repeating, Paraphrasing and Reflecting.

The benefits of active listening include getting people to open up, avoiding misunderstandings, resolving conflict and building trust. In a medical context, benefits may include increased patient satisfaction,[7] improving cross-cultural communication,[11] improved outcomes,[7] or decreased litigation[12]. Active listening can be lifted by the Active Listening Observation Scale.[13]

Barriers to Active Listening

All elements of communication, including listening, may be affected by barriers that can impede the flow of conversation. Such barriers include distractions, trigger words, vocabulary, and limited attention span[14].

Listening barriers may be psychological (e.g. emotions) or physical (e.g. noise and visual distraction). Cultural differences including speakers' accents, vocabulary, and misunderstandings due to cultural assumptions often obstruct the listening process.

Frequently, the listener's personal interpretations, attitudes, biases, and prejudices lead to ineffective communication. Overcoming Listening Barriers

In order to use the active listening technique to improve interpersonal communication, one puts personal emotions aside during the conversation, asks questions and paraphrases back to the speaker in order to clarify understanding, and one also tries to overcome all types of environment distractions. Furthermore, the listener considers the speaker's background, both cultural and personal, to benefit as much as possible from the communication process. Eye contact and appropriate body languages are also helpful. Listening problems include six types of obstacles associated with effective listening practices: Shift Response, Competitive Interrupting, Glazing Over, Pseudolistening, Ambushing, and Content only response (Rothwell 188). Shift response occurs when one competes for attention in a conversation by changing the subject in order to favor oneself (Rothwell 189). The opposite of this occurrence is support response, which is constructive to appropriate listening (Rothwell 189). Both genders use shift response in conversation, but men utilize shift response more often than women. The overuse of this practice is an obstacle to competent listening because it leads to conversational narcissism, which marks an inefficiency in the ability to share interest in the others topics in conversations because of an excess of shift response and a deficiency of support response(Rothwell 189). Interrupting

One type of shift response is interrupting. Interrupting occurs when one person abruptly speaks and the other ceases to speak (Rothwell 190). This phenomenon can be both competitive and noncompetitive (Rothwell 190). Competitive interrupting is a listening problem that arises when the interruption is aggressive and for the purpose of dominating the conversation (Rothwell 190). Unlike noncompetitive, competitive interrupting is me-oriented. When both parties are exercising competitive interrupting, the result is a battle for conversational control (Rothwell 190).

Glazing over

Another type of listening problem is glazing over. Glazing over occurs when the listeners attention wanders, dozes off or daydreaming begins (Rothwell 191). Pseudolistening Pseudolistening, a similar barrier in the way of effective listening, happens when someone pretends to listen during a conversation while attempting to disguise inattention to the message (Rothwell 191). Typical responses in this fashion include Mm-Hmm, Really?, and Uh huh (Rothwell 191). During this time of inattention, the pseudolister is unfocused; therefore, it can be very frustrating for the speaker because it is a way the listener turns away a connecting bid (Rothwell). Ambushing

Ambushing is an example of negative listening in which the listener ignores the strength of the message, instead looking for weaknesses in order to attack what the speaker says (Rothwell 193, 194). Although the listener is attentive, the problems stem from the fact that responses are rebuttals and refutations of the speakers message (Rothwell 194). Content-only response

The last type of listening problem, content-only response, occurs when one focuses on the content of the message, but ignores the emotional side. This type of response does not recognize feelings and comprehends only the literal meaning of messages (Rothwell 194).

Reflective listening is a communication strategy involving two key steps: seeking to understand a speaker's idea, then offering the idea back to the speaker, to confirm the idea has been understood correctly. It attempts to

"reconstruct what the client is thinking and feeling and to relay this understanding back to the client".

Reflective listening is a more specific strategy than the more general methods of active listening. It arose from Carl Rogers' school of client-centered therapy in counselling theory. Dalmar Fisher, an Associate Professor at Boston college, developed a model for Reflective Listening that includes the following elements:

- Actively engaging in the conversation, by reducing or eliminating distractions of any kind to allow for paying full attention to the conversation at hand. - Genuinely empathizing with the speakers point of view. This doesnt mean agreeing with the speaker, just viewing things from his/her perspective. The listener encourages the person to speak freely, by being non judgmental and empathetic.

- Mirroring the mood of the speaker, reflecting the emotional state with words and nonverbal communication. This calls for the listener to quiet his mind and fully focus on the mood of the speaker. The mood will be apparent not just in the words used but in the tone of voice, in the posture and other nonverbal cues given by the speaker. The listener will look for congruence between words and mood.

- Summarizing what the speaker said, using the listeners own words. This is different than paraphrasing, where words and phrases are moved around and replaced to mirror what the speaker said. The reflective listener recaps the message using his own words.