11.4: Overcome Barriers to Listening

Think about the times you did a good job of listening. Why did you do well? One of the reasons was probably your level of motivation. Here are four suggestions on how to enhance your motivation to listen in future situations.

1. Recall why this listening situation is important. Listeners should try to remember why this particular situation is important. Speakers should try to remind their audience why it’s important to listen, too.
   1. Informative and listening situations:
      1. Is it critical to mission success; will this help me do my job better?
      2. Will this information help me make a better decision?
      3. Is it on the test; is it a prerequisite for other material that is on the test?
      4. Can someone get hurt if we mess this up?
      5. Will our unit look bad if I don’t "get" it; will I look bad?
      6. Will we be discussing this later; will I have to teach this to someone else?
      7. Is understanding this presentation important to my personal or family goals?
   2. Critical listening situations:
      1. Do I have to decide which position to take?
      2. Is the evidence strong and the logic sound?
      3. What unanswered questions surround this issue; what things are being left unsaid?
   3. Empathic situations:
      1. Is this speaker having trouble communicating the facts because of strong emotions?
      2. Do I need to mend fences with this coworker?
      3. In this negotiation, am I really sure I know what is most important to the other party?
      4. Does this family member count on me for emotional support?
      5. Do I have a personal commitment to this person as well as this issue?
2. Identify and correct barriers to listening motivation. Both listeners and speaker can benefit from a hard look at factors that may inhibit listening. What factors can you control? What factors do you just have to live with? Fix what you can and acknowledge what you can’t.
   1. Physical barriers may block listening-noisy equipment, visual distractions, etc. Avoid distractions when possible: If you can, sit up front. This puts less noise and visual distraction between you and the speaker and allows you to more clearly see any visual aids. Sitting next to quiet people also helps you to focus on the speaker.
   2. Personal barriers such as physical fatigue, illness and discomfort, as well as psychological distractions like work, family or financial problems, can also affect listening.
   3. Semantic barriers may create obstacles: the speaker’s intent may not be understood by the audience when using words or phrases with more than one meaning; ideas, objects or actions with more than one word image; or slang, jargon or organizational acronyms. For example, the word "crusade" may have one connotation with an audience in Ohio, but have a different connotation when used in a press conference in the Middle East.
3. Look for common ground. Our listening motivation is crippled when we adversely stereotype speakers or topics. Are you carrying around biases that might be triggered by a speaker’s age, race, religion, gender, ethnicity or personal appearance? Have you already decided that this topic is uninteresting, irrelevant or taught at a level that is below you? This kind of thinking can be lethal to listening motivation.
   
   To break the pattern, ask yourself some more empowering questions. What are the underlying commonalities and interesting interrelationships between your interests and those of the speaker? Relate the topic at hand to your own interests. Sometimes this small, simple exercise creates an interesting challenge and bridges the gaps that exist.
4. Treat listening as a learning opportunity and an intellectual challenge. So, how do you become motivated to listen to a topic that may, at first glance, seem boring, unrelated or irrelevant?
   1. If you’re listening to an informational briefing on a topic you’re already an expert on, listen to improve your ability to teach the topic to someone else. How did the speaker organize the talk? What terms were defined? What terms were not defined? Did the speaker use interesting examples that you could "borrow" when you try to explain to someone else?
   2. If you’re listening to a speaker who’s failing miserably, ask yourself how could he or she do better? Make some notes and offer tactful but constructive feedback later.
   3. Translate the problem to a personal, intellectual challenge. Effective and active listening is an exercise in critical thinking and can serve to sharpen your concentration skills. Develop a "remember game" and make listening a learning activity.

SUMMARY: In our eagerness to make our point or make our mark, we often forget there’s more to the story than what we know. Listening is a critical communication skill that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Misunderstandings and mistakes in communication can be lethal in the military environment, and listening helps build trust between members of the Air Force team.

In this chapter we have talked about three approaches to listening-informative, critical and empathic listening. Different situations call for different approaches and the listening skills used should be tailored to the situation.