Is Anyone Listening?

1. Listening is so very important because is more than just hearing, it is an interactive process that takes concentration and commitment. Effective listening in business is so crucial to providing quality service, facilitating groups, training staff, improving teamwork, and supervising and managing for improved performance. If we practice our listening skills, we will be more successful in anything we do, for everything we accomplish we use the skill listening.

2. The 4 different types of listening are;

• Casual listening, which is listening for pleasure, amusement and relaxation.
• Listening for information, listening for information and data (self-explanatory.) 
•  Intensive listening, when you listen to obtain information, solve problems, or when you persuade or dissuade.
• Empathetic listening, empathy meaning when a person attempts to share another's feelings or emotions, so making empathetic listening when you listen to someone express their feelings (an example can be counselors.)

I think the types of listening I spend most of my day doing are causal listening and listening for information. Since I am in school for most of the day, I am constantly listening for information so that I can gain more knowledge and do better educationally, and when I'm giving my brain a break from work, I use casual listening to talk to my friends and listen to music.

3. The 6 poor listening habits are;

• Faking attention, when you fake that you are listening to the speaker.
• Allowing disruptions, which is when you allow distractions to disrupt your train of thought or focus on the speaker.
• Over-listening, when a listener attempts to record everything the speaker is saying that they miss the main ideas or major points.
• Stereotyping, judging someone before they speak because of their physical features or perceptions, making  it harder to actually listen to what they're saying.
• Dismissing subjects as uninteresting, such as when a student asks a teacher "are we doing anything important in class today?"
• Failing to observe nonverbal aids, which can be when a listener is not tracking the speaker, missing important gestures or expressions.

I believe the 2 of these 6 listening habits that I'm the worst at is over listening because I want to obtain as much information as possible, making me miss the major points, and faking attention, meaning that I'm tracking the speaker, but in my "own world," not listening to a word they're saying.

4. I think I am a moderate listener. When I do listen, I try to gather as much information as possible, and when I'm not, I don't pay attention to a word the speaker says. I hear, but I don't listen. For example, whenever I'm really tired, I have a hard to listening to what the speaker is saying, though when I'm wide awake, I try to gather to much information, making it harder to remember everything the speaker says before he/she is finished.
5. My weakness in listening can be focusing. I either focus to hard, or I don't focus enough. A strategy I could use is not to get distracted so easily and to tone everything else out when the speaker is speaking. I tried this strategy at my Project Kick-Off convention on 9/12/12 at 6:30pm and it came out as a success. I wasn't distracted at all and I listened to every single presentation.