Review the Five Dominate Listening Styles and 10 Keys to Effective Listening.
The five dominate listening styles are appreciative, empathic, comprehensive, discerning and evaluative. Which style do you use the most? Or does it depend on the situation?
An appreciative listener listens in a relaxed manner for pleasure, entertainment or inspiration (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 p 309). Yesterday, I was watching Dr. Oz and I have not seen the show for a long time and it was a rainy day so because the topic interested me I watched in appreciative listening style. The topic was on what types of healthy foods to eat and there were several women from two families that competed in a Family Feud style game and it was interesting to see that both families where on the healthy track and by listening to Dr. Oz’s light and humorous and educational manner I felt inspired and entertained.
An empathic listener is one that listens with their heart and an open mind, people who are empathic listeners can appreciate what the other person is saying without trying to dominate the conversation. Richard Salem wrote an article called, "The Benefits of Empathic Listening Skills", he states that it “Builds trust, reduces tension, encourages deeper conversations, and creates a safe environment for people to speak in"(Salem, 2003). People who use this style do not interrupt the other person; ask open-ended questions, use sensitivity and emotions, and reflect on what the other person is saying before responding to what the other person had just told them (Salem, 2003). Do you recall a time when you used empathic listening skills with a friend or at work?
A comprehensive listener will make sense of a message first organizing specific thoughts and actions and then integrates this information by focusing on relationships among ideas (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 p 309). Ed Tate wrote an interesting article on the five types of listening styles called, “Speak Into the Listening that People are Hearing: The Five Ways People Listen & How to Connect Deeply with Others”, and he explains why comprehensive listeners use that style. They use the information given so it will make sense to them; they like to make labels because this gives the comprehensive listener structure so that they will understand and be able to learn what is being spoken in a logical way (Tate, 2000). Do you think that comprehensive learners are able to store more information and understand it faster because they associate labels with ideas?
The discerning listener according to our textbook attempts to understand the main message and likes to take notes and prefers logical presentations (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 p 310). The person who uses this type of listening style likes at ask a lot of questions, figure out what the big picture is and they will gather information and focus on the main point (Tate, 2000). I picture this person to be very out-going and inquisitive because to ask a lot of questions during a meeting and interrupt the flow they have to be pretty confident that they will be listened to and not seen as over the top. When I had team meeting there were always a couple of people that spoke up and whether you agreed with them or not they always asked interesting questions that got the group thinking about an idea, that if the person kept quiet would have gone unknown by the rest of the group. Can you think of a time when someone used the discerning listener style during a meeting?
Finally the last listening style is evaluative where the person listens analytically and continually formulates arguments and challenge what is being said and they tend to accept or reject messages based on their personal beliefs and they ask a lot of questions and become disruptive (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 p 310). According to Ed Tate he believes that the evaluative listener wants to solve the problem and that their symbol is the wrench because that person wants to take action or make a move on a decision they may be skeptical so they will ask questions (Tate, 2000). Although their thoughts are a little different what information on this listening style did you find to back either one up?
The ten keys to effective listening are capitalize on the speed of the thought, this listener will stay with the speaker and will summarize what the person is saying and read between the lines (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 p 311). Listen for ideas, what will motivate my co-workers and I to get excited about the idea that is being expressed. When I watch the Biggest Loser I used to watch and see what types of workouts Bob and Jillian had them do and I noticed the behaviors that changed with the contestants the longer they stayed on the ranch. Now they have new trainers and the focus is also on what types of food one should eat and the message goes out to the audience not just the people who are on the show. I have started buying frozen vegetables because the trainers kept talking about the nutritional value of them and how easy they were to make. I still have a bag of organic rice in my refrigerator that I have had for so long but because I listened to a one minute blurb from Bob I have changed my eating habits to include vegetables daily. This goes back to the first thought on capitalizing on the speed of the message, a one minute blurb advertising for Green Giant helped me to easily add in vegetable that I avoided because they took too long to prepare.
Some of the other listening keys are find an area of interest, judge content and not delivery, hold your fire, and work at listening, resist distractions that will disconnect us from the message being spoken, hear what is being said, challenge yourself and treat complex presentations as an exercise for the mind, and use handouts, overheads and other visual aids (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009 p 311). Whenever I had been in a meeting and someone has listed statics to show importance for something I have a tendency to disconnect from what the person is saying because I do not believe that giving out a number is reflective of the truth. Where did they gather their information, who gathered it, what type of environment was this done in? So when people throw out a number I tend to feel annoyed that this is the type of style their presentation is starting off with, numbers can change meaning over time.
Kinicki, A., & Kreitner, R. (2009). Organizational Behavior: Key Concepts, Skills &
Best Practices (customized 4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Salem, R. (2003, July 1). The benefits of empathic listening. Retrieved from http://www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/empathic-listening
Tate, E. (2000). Speak into the listening that people are hearing: The five ways people listen & how to connect deeply with others. Retrieved from http://www.edtate.com/blog/2011/03/speak-into-the-listening-that-people-are-hearing-the-five-ways-people-listen-how-to-connect-deeply-with-others/
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