Listening Uncategorized
"Something I wish I could teach parents is to listen to kids rather
than ignore or say 'That's nice.' Instead, listen, really listen, to
what children have to say." -- Holly, age 12 (found at the National
PTA's Family Room at
http://www.pta.org/commonsense/4_family/45_listen.html)
"Remember, you can listen a person's soul into existence." -- Sign over a campus crisis hotline
“When you listen to somebody else, whether you like it or not, what they say becomes part of you.” -- David Bohm
"One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the
trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole
outlook on the world.” -- Dr. E. H. Mayo
"When you've learned how to Listen, well that's when you've learned
everything you need to know in your life!" -- Glynn David Harris
International Listening Association's 1999
Listener of the Year
(See the rest of the lyrics to this song at http://dave-viewtrend.home.att.net/)
"To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said
beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the
essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone
knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound,
which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in.
Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in
yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural
speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning." -- Peter Senge
"One of the most valuable things we can do to heal one another is listen to each other's stories." --Rebecca Falls
"To talk to someone who does not listen is enough to tense the devil." -- Pearl Bailey
"Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most
of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is
being told us." -- Alice Duer Miller (1874 - 1942) US poet, author
"Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer." -- Dalai Lama, 2001
"Listening looks easy, but it's not simple. Every head is a world." -- Cuban Proverb
"Praise does wonders for our sense of hearing." -- Arnold Glasgow
Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand
ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication
message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too,
should listeners know themselves. -- Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn
Coakley, Listening
Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to
the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your
appearance, or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what
you are going to say when the other stops talking, or are debating
about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable. Such
matters have their place, but only after listening to the word as the
word is being uttered. Listening is a primitive act of love in which a
person gives himself to another’s word, making himself accessible and
vulnerable to that word. -- William Stringfellow, Friend’s Journal
An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing,
the temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices,
frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible
the speaker’s world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.
This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and
enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this.
Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of
the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other.
Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable
and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her
mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to
appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is
begun again. -- M. Scott Peck, MD, The Road Less Traveled
"Usually a person relates to another under the tacit assumption that
the other shares his view of reality, that indeed there is only one
reality...." -- Paul Watzlawick - Psychologist
We need a definite purpose, a specific reason for listening, other wise
we don’t pay attention and don’t really hear or understand. -- Robert
Montgomery - Listening Made Easy
The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. -- George Bernard Shaw
The reason you don’t understand me Edith is because I’m talkin’ to you
in English and you’re listening in dingbat! -- Archie Bunker, All In
The Family
"As friends, we don’t see eye to eye, but then we don’t hear ear to ear either. -- Buster Keaton
"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me
what I thought, and attended to my answer." -- Henry David Thoreau
"If I can listen to what he tells me, if I can understand how it seems
to him if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then
will be releasing the portent forces of change within him."
"Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen
effectively, skillfully, and with understanding to another person." --
Carl Rogers, psychologist.
"Few people... have had much training in listening. Living in a
competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned
with getting our own view across, and we tend to find other people’s
speeches a tedious interruption of the our of our own ideas. -- S.I.
Hayakawa, How to Attend a Conference
"The art of listening needs it highest development in listening to
oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really
hear what we’re saying." -- Sidney Harris, columnist
"One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who take the
trouble to listen to us as we consider our problems, can change our
whole outlook on the work." -- Elton Mayo, behavioral scientist
"When a person knows that he has a good listener to talk to, he’ll
share his thoughts more fully, which in turn, makes it easier for the
caseworker to help him with his problems. And, moreover, as he talks,
the person needing help often finds a good solution to his problems
himself. -- Florence Holis, social worker
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something. -- Wilson Mizner
Small talk deserves small talk responses. -- Thomas G. Banville
Because of their inner rigidities, fears and anxieties, these listeners
dread the mutual exchange of ideas and beliefs. They listen only to
what they feel they should be attentive to, blotting out larger areas
of wariness and thus avoiding the basic truth involved in issues an
situations. They are constantly suspicious and cautious about other
people’s reactions and set up emotional filters which disturb effective
listening. Because of their hypersensitivity to criticism and rebuff,
they are constantly on their guard and on the defensive. They listen
with prejudiced opinions, preconceived notions, condemnations and
cynical attitudes.
They fear facing or listening to the truth about themselves and as a
result their hearing becomes colored with absolute judgments, "black
and white" evaluations and distorted emotional reactions. -- Dominick
A. Barbara, The Art Of Listening
...Adult listening behaviors become habitual. Our listening behaviors
have been acquired and reinforced over a long period of time. As adults
we rarely think about how we listen or consider that it takes time to
change old habits. We listen the way we do because we have learned to
listen that way.
Among the most influential operating factors during communication are
the filtering agents of senders and receivers. Similar to filters used
with a camera lens, filtering agents allows the passage or blockage or
coloring of other elements. Consider how professional photographers use
filters designed to let in some rays of light while screening out other
rays that may ruin or distort a picture. While a filter is in use, it
becomes a part of the camera and affects the final outcomes of the
picture. Camera filters are changed to get desired results. Similar to
a camera lens, filter agents communication with others. Filtering
agents such as past work experiences, educational training, opinions,
emotions, attitudes, feelings, and language abilities influences how
you send and receive messages. Understanding your personal filtering
agents puts you in a position to maximize your communication and
listening success.
Effective listeners remember that "words have no meaning - people have
meaning." The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process;
meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge
and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while
under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved. --
Lyman K. Steil, Larry L. Barker, & Kittie W. Watson, Effective
Listening Key To Your Success
Like walking and thinking and breathing and talking, like all of the
things that we seen to be doing naturally, we take our understanding of
the [communication - mine] process for granted. We assume we know what
we’re talking about. We smile knowingly and nod knowingly at each other
when we discuss communication.
....It’s extremely difficult to introduce vital new knowledge when
everybody assumes he already knows all that needs to be known."
At best. That task is a most difficult one. If you believe you already
know most of what you need to know or could know about human
communication; if you think all that’s left to be learned about human
communication is a few techniques; if you found yourself nodding your
head with an "Ah, yes, this is about communication - I know what it’s
about"... Then we have a real communication problem!
Human communicating is not a science. It is very much still - and perhaps always will be - essentially an art.
Technically, we can no more understand communicating by being able to
utter, "there’s a communication problem here’ than we could understand
nuclear physics through our sheer ability to say: "this looks to me
like a problem in nuclear physics." Listening to a noisy automobile
engine and musing, "sounds like the tappets to me," is not the same as
being able to repair or adjust noisy tappets.
An even more formidable obstacle is our inclination to assume we understand human communication simply because we do it.
As a result of the sort of education and training in communication that
has been available, it seems natural for us to think in terms of
how-t0-communicate rather than how-to-be-communicated-with. Yet the one
is no more important that the other. The ability to be
communicated-with is just as important to personal or professional
competence as is the ability to communicate-to others. Perhaps more so.
Further, our inclination to think of communication essentially in terms
of manipulating or affecting others- of communicating-to others -
stands as an obstacle to a more advantageous view of communication as
something when occurs in the receiver. Overemphasis on the origination
of statements to be transmitted detracts for the primary focus that
should be placed upon the creating of the message within the receiver,
the message upon which he will base his thinking and his behavior. --
Lee Thayer, Communication And Communication Systems
Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand
ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication
message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too,
should listeners know themselves. Brook states his case eloquently: --
Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn Coakley, Listening
To see one’s self accurately; to understand and know one’s self clearly
and honestly’ to have acquired those abilities an characteristics
associated with a strong, wholesome, self-concept-these objectives are
directly related to liking one’s self, being confident in one’s self,
and in relating and living effectively and satisfyingly with others. --
William D Brooks, Speech Communication
Chapter 10
Rogers and Farson (1973) note the risks taken by one who practices
active listening in order to empathize with the speaker. In achieving
understanding of a situation from the speaker’s point of view, one
risks being changed by the experience to coming to see within oneself
the world as that other person does. One will sense deeply the feelings
of someone else so that one understands the meaning that person’s
experience have for him. When one achieves this, one risks a shift in
thinking to the terms of another. One may come to see the world as this
person sees it; to find it threatening to set aside, even for a short
time, one’s own beliefs to try to interpret and evaluate from anther’s
view point. The willingness to do this requires a strong sense of one’s
self. It requires confidence in one’s own feeling and values.
Everyone has a basic human need to be recognized and acknowledged by
others. Listening is one of the most fundamental means by which this is
achieved. When someone engages in the act of listening, having chosen
to listen to a particular person, that person’s existence is affirmed,
as is his importance as a speaker. By nonverbal actions alone, the
listener tells that person he has importance in the listener’s frame of
reference. Another result of acknowledging the speaker will be that
there will be better speakers to listen to: if one listens better, most
speakers may be stimulated to speak more effectively.
Anyone who wishes to improve skill in listening must be willing to
expend the time and effort to permit others to express their feelings
and ideas. To do this, one must be willing to give something of
oneself. This requires that the person must, first of all, be
receptive. Receptiveness is a deliberate action, consciously performed
with the intention of relating in some way to the other. -- Vonicle
Smith, A Handbook Of Communication Skills, edited By Owen Hargie
You can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes until you take off your own shoes .
Communication works for those who work at it.
A good listener truly wants to know the speaker -- John Powell S.J. "Will The Real Me Please Stand Up?"
To communicate is risky, to not communicate is riskier. -- Anonymous
"Ya know, I ain’t use to talking to a closed door." -- Sylvester Stallone - Rocky
Ingratitude is sharper than a serpents tooth. -- King Lear, Act 1 scene 1
Listen
When I ask you to listen to me
And you start giving advice,
You have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me
And you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,
You’re trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me
And you feel you have to do something to solve my problems,
You have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen!
All I ask was that you listen, not talk or do.
Just hear me.
Advice is cheap:
25 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering,
Maybe lonely and isolated and grieving and searching, But not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can do and need to do for myself, You contribute to my fear and to my weakness.
But when you accept, as a simple fact, that I do feel what I feel,
No matter how irrational,
Then I can quite trying to convince you
And you can get about the business of understanding What’s behind this irrational feeling.
And when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.
Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes, for some people, Because
God is mute and doesn’t try to give advice or try to fix things. He
just listens, and lets you work it out for yourself.
So please listen and just hear me.
And if you want to talk,
Wait a minute for your turn.
And I’ll listen to you.
The Wall
Their wedding picture mocked them from the table, these two, Whose minds no longer touched each other.
They lived with such a heavy barricade between them that neither
Battering ram of words nor artilleries of touch could break it down.
Somewhere, between the oldest child’s first tooth and the youngest Daughter’s graduation, they lost each other.
Throughout the years, each slowly unraveled that tangled ball of string
Called self, and as they tugged at stubborn knots, each his Searching
self from the other.
Sometime she cried at night an begged the whispering darkness to tell her who she was.
He lay beside her, snoring like a hibernating bear, unaware of her winter.
Once, after they had made love, he wanted to tell her how afraid he Was
of dying, but fearing to show his naked soul, he spoke Instead of the
beauty of her eyes.
She took a course in modern art, trying to find her self in colors
Splashed upon a canvas, and complained to other women about Men who
were insensitive.
He climbed into a tomb called "the office," wrapped his mind in a shroud Of paper figures and buried himself in customers.
Slowly, the wall between them rose, cemented my the mortar of indifference.
One day, reaching out to touch each other, they found a barrier they
Could not penetrate, and recoiling from the coldness of the stone, Each
retreated from the stranger on the other side.
For when love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle, nor when Fiery bodies lose their heat.
It lies panting, exhausted, expiring at the bottom of a wall It could not scale.
Improved listening skills will not necessarily result in improved
listening. We must apply these skills. We must be convinced that it
pays to listen. The combination of desire (I want to listen), effort
(I’m going to work at it), and skill (I know how to do it) will result
in improved listening. -- Donald L. Kirkpatrick, No-Nonsense
Communication
We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside
us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our
touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder,
spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. --
e.e. cummings
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. -- James Baldwin
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force….When we
are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas
actually begin to grow within us and come to life…. When we listen to
people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that
we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative
fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and
unexpected laughter and wisdom.… Well, it is when people really listen
to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins
to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way." -- Brenda
Ueland
"To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience
for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that
people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often
fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an
ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing
that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes
frightened." -- Robert C. Murphy
"You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." -- M. Scott Peck
"If speaking is silver, then listening is gold." -- Turkish Proverb
"The principle of listening, someone has said, is to develop a big ear
rather than a big mouth." -- Howard G. and Jeanne Hendricks
"Now a man cannot listen to another while he will have all the talk and discourse to himself." -- C.H. Spurgeon
"Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens." -- Alastair Farrugia
"Like the Bard’s King Harry before Agincourt she [Princess Diana]
captured the hearts of the footsoldiers of a nation, wandering among
her fellow Britons and listening." -- "Diana" (an editorial) CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE MONITOR, Sept. 2, 1997 (p. 20)
Easy listening exists only on the radio. -- David Barkan
The best way to persuade people is with your ears — by listening to them. -- Dean Rusk
I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention. -- Diane Sawyer
Instead of listening to that is being said to them, many managers are
already listening to what they are going to say. -- Anonymous
The way to stay fresh is you never stop traveling, you never stop
listening. You never stop asking people what they think. -- Rene
McPherson, former chairman, Dana
It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal. -- Shakespeare
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the
associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get
involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys. -- Sam Walton
Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals. -- J. Isham
You're not listening... well, your heart is not. -- Merlin in Excalibur (1981)
Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things
you do, children will see. And learn. Children may not obey, but
children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn,
to learn what to be. Careful before you say, "Listen to me." Children
will listen. -- Witch in Into the Woods (1990) (TV)
The jungle speaks to me because I know how to listen. -- Mowgli in The Jungle Book (1994)
It is difficult for anyone to speak when you listen only to yourself. -- Lorna Bounty in The Man with a Cloak (1951)
In listening mood she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand. -- Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake. Canto i. Stanza 17.
Angels listen when she speaks:
She 's my delight, all mankind's wonder;
But my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder. -- Earl of Rochester
It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be
patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his
ear. -- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The
friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are
listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. -- Karl
Menninger
So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then
you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of
what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. -- Jiddu
Krishnamurti
To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience
for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that
people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often
fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an
ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing
that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes
frigthened. -- Robert C. Murphy
A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In
the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to
know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with. -- Kenneth A. Wells
Opportunities are often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be listening. -- Author Unknown
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing. -- Author Unknown
Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. -- Dr. Joyce Brothers
