Five Styles Of Listening
There are five possible styles of listening you could use. Most people extensively rely on one or two, and are underdeveloped in the others. Which do you use?
 
Style
Purpose
Motivation
Listener Behaviors
Appreciative To relax and enjoy
  • Entertainment
  • Inspiration
  • Enjoyment
  • Fun
  • Find humor
  • Attend to content and style
  • Suspend disbelief
Empathetic To support the speaker emotionally
  • Provide an opportunity for expression
  • Give acceptance without judging
  • Learn from others
  • Affirm visibly
  • Let speaker talk
  • Ask open-ended questions
  • Remain relatively silent
Discerning To get complete and accurate information
  • Determine main message
  • Sort details
  • Learn speaker's priorities
  • Concentrate
  • Take notes
  • Ask for specific clarification
Comprehensive To organize and make sense of information
  • Relate message to listener's experience
  • Understand relationships of ideas
  • Understand conceptual support
  • Show enlightenment
  • See related ideas
  • Summarize frequently
Evaluative To make a decision
  • Relate message to beliefs
  • Assess message validity
  • Obtain factual support
  • Accept or reject message
  • Suspicious or skeptical
  • Question speaker's motives
  • Challenge speaker
  • Quit listening after deciding to reject

Last Modified Monday, 14-Jul-2014 16:38:17 EDT

All contents not otherwise identified copyright © 2002 Stephen Rojak. All rights reserved.
 
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