• Part 1 symbol pink circle
    getting started
  • Part 2 symbol blue triangle
    fundamentals
  • Part 3 symbol green square
    content
  • Part 4 symbol purple triangle
    delivery
  • Part 5 symbol three blue circles
    engaging your audience
  • Part 6 symbol orange asterisk
    speaking to inform
  • Part 7 symbol pink diamond
    speaking to persuade
  • Part 8 symbol green star
    speaking occasions

What Is Effective Listening?

Listening is the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, remembering, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages. Listening helps both speakers and audience members interact more effectively. If, as a speaker, you watch for and analyze your audience’s reactions, you can adjust how you speak and motivate them to listen more attentively and remember what you’ve said. As an audience member, your ability to listen affects how you respond to a speaker’s message. Communication is more successful and meaningful when both speakers and audiences commit themselves to listening attentively and responsibly.

Listening is our number one communication activity. On average we spend over half of our daily communication time listening—way ahead of speaking, reading, and writing.2 Think about all the time you spend listening, whether you’re with other people or on your own wearing earbuds. In a single day, you might listen to an interview on a podcast, a lecture by your instructors, a story from your friends, instructions on a YouTube video, lyrics in a song, and more.

Given the amount of time we spend listening, most of us aren’t very good listeners. Immediately after listening to a short talk, most people can’t accurately report 50 percent of what was said. But you can become a better listener. Like most complex skills, effective listening requires commitment and effort. And to learn to be an effective listener, it helps to identify—and avoid—poor listening habits.

POOR LISTENING

In a world filled with constant distractions, it’s amazing that anyone can listen effectively. In the smaller world of presentation speaking, distractions can include loud and annoying sounds, an uncomfortable room, disruptive outside activities, and a speaker’s delivery. It’s difficult to listen to a speaker who talks too softly, too rapidly, or too slowly or who speaks in a monotone voice. Similarly, a noisy, fidgeting, nonresponsive, or noticeably critical audience can disturb and sidetrack a speaker.

But poor listening isn’t always tied to distractions. All of us have developed a range of listening habits over the course of our lives. Here are some of the most common poor listening habits—the ones you should actively work to avoid:

  • Pseudolistening. Faking attention or pretending to listen, particularly when your mind is elsewhere, you are bored, or you think it pleases the speaker. When you fake listening, you mislead the speaker into thinking that they’ve been heard and understood.
  • Selective listening. Listening only to messages that you like and agree with or avoiding listening to information that is complex, unfamiliar, or in conflict with your opinions. A selective listener may listen only to confirm prior beliefs or identify flaws in what a speaker says.
  • Superficial listening. Paying more attention to how a speaker looks and sounds than to what they say. Superficial listeners often draw hasty conclusions about a speaker and their message before a speaker’s presentation or idea is finished.
  • Defensive listening. Assuming that a speaker’s controversial or critical remarks are personal or unjust attacks. Defensive listeners primarily focus on how to respond to or challenge a speaker rather than trying to understand the speaker’s message.
  • Disruptive listening. Interrupting a speaker, exaggerating your nonverbal reactions, making distracting movements or noise, or noticeably withholding your attention during a presentation. Both the speaker and other audience members may become irritated or offended by disruptive listening.
  • Multitask listening. Doing several things at the same time, such as listening while texting someone, whispering to someone next to you, reading a handout, or scrolling through your email.
  • The next-in-line effect. Thinking about why you disagree with a speaker or silently rehearsing how you will challenge the speaker’s claims instead of listening attentively to what a speaker is saying.

EFFECTIVE LISTENING

Of course, there’s more to listening well than simply avoiding bad habits. Judi Brownell, a leading listening researcher, has identified six separate but interrelated skills that together constitute effective listening. Brownell’s HURIER model—hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding—provides a clear and memorable description of effective listening.3 Here are brief descriptions of the six listening skills and what you can do to improve each one:

  • Hearing. Making clear, aural distinctions among spoken sounds and words. Make sure you’re in the proper state of mind to listen, minimize distractions, and position yourself close to the speaker. If necessary, ask the speaker to repeat themselves or to speak in a louder voice.
  • Understanding. Accurately grasping the speaker’s intended meaning. You may need to ask the speaker to clarify, provide an example or definition, or rephrase what’s been said in more precise terms. You can also state what you think the speaker is saying and then ask whether your understanding is correct.
  • Remembering. Storing, retaining, and recalling information you have heard. One of the best ways to remember a speaker’s message is to identify why you should care about what you’re hearing. We remember things that are personally relevant and emotionally engaging much better than things that we perceive as disconnected from our lives. You can also write down essential ideas and repeat them silently to yourself as you record them.
  • Interpreting. Understanding the meaning of what’s being communicated beyond the literal, verbal message. Think critically about the speaker’s PHYSICAL DELIVERY Part 4 symbol purple triangle (249–59)—such eye contact, facial expressions, posture, appearance, and gestures—as well as their VOCAL DELIVERY Part 4 symbol purple triangle (229–45). Try to empathize with the emotions, values, and attitudes that the speaker is expressing through nonverbal cues.
  • Evaluating. Analyzing and making a judgment about someone’s message. Think critically about the validity of the speaker’s CLAIMS Part 7 symbol pink diamond (408–11) before criticizing, distinguish logical from PERSUASIVE APPEALS Part 7 symbol pink diamond (411–18), and monitor your own emotions and attitudes that could interfere with reasonable judgment.
  • Responding. Providing appropriate and meaningful feedback that signals you have (or have not) heard and understood. Just as you can discern a speaker’s intentions and meaning from nonverbal cues, you can communicate your own reactions nonverbally as clearly as you could verbally.

When and how you use these listening skills depends on whether you are the speaker or an audience member, whether you are speaking to a large or small group, whether the topic is controversial or not, and whether you have the flexibility to interact with the speaker or audience members during or after a presentation.

Glossary

listening
The process of receiving, constructing meaning from, remembering, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal MESSAGES.
monotone voice
A type of vocalization that occurs when there is little change in the PITCH of sounds within words, phrases, and sentences.
pseudolistening
A poor LISTENING habit in which AUDIENCE members pretend they are listening, often because they are bored or think it pleases the SPEAKER.
selective listening
A poor LISTENING habit in which AUDIENCE members pay attention only to MESSAGES they like or agree with, or avoid complex, unfamiliar information that contradicts or challenges OPINIONS they already hold.
superficial listening
A poor LISTENING habit in which AUDIENCE members pay more attention to a speaker’s APPEARANCE and VOCAL DELIVERY than they do to what the SPEAKER has to say. Superficial listeners often draw conclusions about a speaker and their MESSAGE before the presentation is finished.
defensive listening
A poor LISTENING habit in which AUDIENCE members assume that a SPEAKER’S controversial or critical statements are personal or unjust attacks. Rather than trying to understand the speaker’s MESSAGE, defensive listeners focus only on how to challenge the speaker’s position.
disruptive listening
A poor LISTENING habit in which AUDIENCE members interrupt the SPEAKER, exaggerate their nonverbal responses (frowning, shaking their head no), make distracting movements or noise, and/or noticeably withhold their attention.
multitask listening
A poor LISTENING habit in which AUDIENCE members engage in other activities while supposedly listening to a SPEAKER.
next-in-line effect
A poor LISTENING habit in which an AUDIENCE member who will be speaking immediately after the current SPEAKER doesn’t listen well to what the speaker is saying.
effective listening
As defined by Judi Brownell’s HURIER model, the six interrelated skills needed for attentive LISTENING: HEARING, UNDERSTANDING, REMEMBERING, INTERPRETING, EVALUATING, and RESPONDING.
hearing
A component of the HURIER model of EFFECTIVE LISTENING that describes your ability to make clear, aural distinctions among the sounds and words of a SPEAKER.
understanding
A component of the HURIER model of EFFECTIVE LISTENING that refers to your ability to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker’s MESSAGE.
remembering
A components of the HURIER model of EFFECTIVE LISTENING that describes your ability to retain and recall information you have heard.
interpreting
A component of the HURIER model of EFFECTIVE LISTENING that describes your ability to accurately understand the meaning of a speaker’s MESSAGE.
evaluating
A component of the HURIER model of EFFECTIVE LISTENING that describes your ability to effectively analyze and make judgments about a speaker’s MESSAGE.
responding
A component of the HURIER model of EFFECTIVE LISTENING that describes your ability to give appropriate and meaningful FEEDBACK that signals you have or have not heard and understood the SPEAKER.

Endnotes

  • This finding summarizes several research studies on communication and listening time. All these studies rank listening as the communication skill we use most of the time.Return to reference 2
  • Brownell, Listening, 14–18.Return to reference 3