The Receiving Stage
The first stage of the listening process is the receiving stage, which involves hearing and attending.
Learning Objectives
Define the receiving stage of the listening process
Key Takeaways
Key Points
- Hearing is the physiological process of registering sound waves as they hit the eardrum.
- Attending is the process of accurately identifying particular sounds we hear as words.
- Attending also involves being able to discern breaks between words, or speech segmentation.
Key Terms
- Hearing: The physiological process of registering sound waves as they hit the eardrum.
- Attending: The process of accurately identifying particular sounds as words.
- Receiving stage: The first stage of the listening process, which involves hearing and attending.
The Receiving Stage
The first stage of the listening process is the receiving stage, which involves hearing and attending.
Use Your Ears!: The first stage of the listening process is receiving.
Hearing is the physiological process of registering sound waves as they hit the eardrum. As obvious as it may seem, in order to effectively gather information through listening, we must first be able to physically hear what we’re listening to. The clearer the sound, the easier the listening process becomes.
Paired with hearing, attending is the other half of the receiving stage in the listening process. Attending is the process of accurately identifying and interpreting particular sounds we hear as words. The sounds we hear have no meaning until we give them their meaning in context. Listening is an active process that constructs meaning from both verbal and nonverbal messages.
The Challenges of Reception
Listeners are often bombarded with a variety of auditory stimuli all at once, so they must differentiate which of those stimuli are speech sounds and which are not. Effective listening involves being able to focus in on speech sounds while disregarding other noise. For instance, a train passenger that hears the captain’s voice over the loudspeaker understands that the captain is speaking, then deciphers what the captain is saying despite other voices in the cabin. Another example is trying to listen to a friend tell a story while walking down a busy street. In order to best listen to what she’s saying, the listener needs to ignore the ambient street sounds.
Attending also involves being able to discern human speech, also known as “speech segmentation. “1 Identifying auditory stimuli as speech but not being able to break those speech sounds down into sentences and words would be a failure of the listening process. Discerning speech segmentation can be a more difficult activity when the listener is faced with an unfamiliar language.
Non-verbal communication skills for selling
When selling to customers, your non-verbal communication skills – such as active listening and interpreting non-verbal cues – are just as important as what you say. Developing these skills will help you understand what your customers want, so you can offer them the most suitable products and services.
Why is listening so important in life and at work?
Listening is a key component of effectivecommunication skills.
Without listening, you can’t understand what other people are really trying to say. It’s easy to get something wrong and make assumptions.
On the other hand, when you actively listen, you can fully communicate with someone else.
Listening is the most important part of communication. That’s because it allows you to come up with a substantial and meaningful response. You can pick up on subtleties you wouldn’t have otherwise,especially with body language.
If something isn’t clear, you can ask clarifying questions. This is something you might not have done without active listening.
At work, communication is an important soft skill. According to LinkedIn's 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 80% of companies say that soft skills are increasingly important to their success.
Listening is also important forproductive collaboration.
According to the same LinkedIn report, collaboration is the third most important soft skill companies need.
Imagine trying to collaborate if you can’t actively listen to your colleagues. Information gets lost, and misunderstandings occur.
The same can happen if everyone on the team uses different levels of listening. Some people will be more engaged than others. Not everyone will get the same understanding of the same conversation.
You can avoid this if everyone actively listens to each other.
Plus, when you actively listen, your colleagues and your superiors will notice that you come up with meaningful responses.
Listening is also crucial if you want to learn effectively.
Without attentive listening, it can be easy to miss small details that make a difference in your learning.
Active listening games
You can improve team communication with active listening games.
In one such game, you and your colleagues can split up into groups of two. The first person in each group is given a picture, while the other person is given a pen and paper.
The second participant needs to ask questions in order to accurately draw the image the first participant is holding.
In another game, participants need to mime non-verbal cues to express their feelings about a topic. The other participants need to write down what they believe the other person feels.
Finally, you can practice active listening by having all participants listen to one person speak for three to five minutes. During this time, no other participants may speak. Afterwards, the other participants need to paraphrase what they think the other person said.