11.1: Understanding Hearing and Listening

To better understand the listening process, let’s begin by distinguishing between hearing and listening. Hearing occurs when your ears pick up sound waves transmitted by a speaker or some other source. Hearing requires a source of sound and an ear capable of perceiving it. It does not require the conscious decoding of information. Each day, you hear many sounds-background music in an elevator, the hum of the computer, cars passing by outside-sounds you may not even be aware of unless someone draws your attention to them.

Listening, on the other hand, involves making sense out of what is transmitted. Listening involves not only hearing; it involves attending to and considering what is heard. As you listen, you receive sounds and you consciously and actively decode them. Effective listening is an active process and active listening involves exerting energy and responding appropriately in order to hear, comprehend, evaluate and remember the message.

Listening is critical to good oral communications. Though listening is usually ignored in formal education, it is the most common form of communication. According to Dr. John Kline, an authority on Air Force communication and the author of Listening Effectively, studies have shown that we spend 70 percent of our waking hours in some form of communication. When speakers and listeners fail to communicate, the outcomes can be disastrous. Planes can crash, unit morale can deteriorate, "routine” surgeries can have horrendous outcomes and families can self-destruct. Though we often focus on the speaker’s role in communication, good listening skills can often make the difference between success and failure.

Both Air Force and civilian managers put a premium on good listening. In a recent study, 282 members of the Academy of Certified Administrative Managers identified listening as the most crucial management skill. In another study published in Communication Quarterly, business people were polled on the most important communication skills they used at work and the one they wished they had studied in college: Listening was the #1 answer to both questions.

Listening is especially important in the Air Force and actually in any military unit. Success is a matter of life and death and we routinely maintain and operate equipment valued in the millions. Receiving, comprehending and remembering spoken information is critical and any miscommunication is potentially catastrophic. Effective listening helps to build the trust and mutual respect needed to do our job. Military personnel must understand their team members and the situation, and leaders with good listening skills often make better decisions and have a stronger bond with their troops.

To summarize, listening allows us to learn the facts, evaluate situations, understand our team members and build trust with others. These are all really important, so why do so few people listen well-why is it so hard-and how do we get better at it?

Everybody wants to talk, few want to think and nobody wants to listen.
-Anonymous