Let's talk about how poor listening skills could cause conflicts in our everyday life.
Social conflicts generally involve some misunderstanding. However, poor listening skills seem to worsen the conflicts. More often than not, these poor listeners tend to listen and think about something else at the same time. It becomes more common when they are in conflict. Instead of carefully attending to what the opponent is saying or has said, they give their response without further thinking once the opponent has finished talking. As a result, they might offend the opponent unintentionally.
Whenever we receive any new information, the first thing we will do is to compare with the knowledge we already have. We tend to receive new information more accurately, if it coincides with what we already know. However, if it disputes our previous assumptions of the situation, we may distort it so as to fit in our mind or we may just ignore the information as misguided or simply wrong. For those with poor listening skill, they tend to interpret things to match with their existing views. Thus, they often make assumption that what other people are saying corresponds to their own expectations. For this reason, it easily gives rise to conflict due to misunderstandings and misperceptions.
Communication deteriorates as the conflicts escalate and distrust tends to build. Opponents are framed in increasingly negative ways as selfish, stubborn, short-sighted and even evil. Given such a negative mindset, ambiguous messages from the opponents are interpreted in the worst possible way; even clear messages tend to be disregarded, if they are inconsistent with the poor listeners' original negative view.
Such poor listening makes effective communication almost impossible. No matter how much care one person takes or how much effort the person puts in to communicate their values, concerns or needs in a fair clear way, the communication will still fail if the listener refuses to accept the incoming information.
So is/are there any other way/s that a poor listener could cause a failure in effective communication?
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Hi,
ReplyDeleteListening is important like speaking in our daily life. Poor listeners always face with communication problem/breakdown. I think there are two cases why people are not good listener. First case is language problem. Although people can speak and listen their mother language well, it is very difficult for them to speak and listen other languages. Second case is that people are not interested in their conversation although they can speak and listen languages well.
Therefore, it is important to be an active listener to avoid communication conflict in our daily routine works.
Hi Ronny,
ReplyDeleteYes, I do agree that the refusal to listen can aggravate the situation especially in time of conflicts. If both parties keep saying their own side of stories without listening to the other one, the problem will not be solved as they would not know their own mistakes. And I guess that this is probably one of the main reasons why some conflicts can persists for a long time.
To Zaw, although I agree that language differene can be a barrier to listening, I believe that it really boils down to the willingness of the person to really listen what others say. If someone is willing to make an effort in listening to the other party, he can always overcome his language barrier by clarify his doubts with the speaker if he does not understand certain parts of his speech.
In a conflict there are two ways of listening, to win or conciliate. If you listen to win, you will just seize on words that further your case so it's only when you truly hope to resolve the conflict that you try to listen but this may not happen immediately. I think people resist listening properly sometimes because the information runs counter to set ideas they have about the topic in dispute. It's probably not possible to alter our way of thinking instantly so that is why there often is a delay before real listening takes place.
ReplyDeleteMrs Richardson
Hi ronny,
ReplyDeleteI think that it really takes two hands to clap here. Both the sender and the receiver play important roles in effective communication.
When receivers do not listen actively, they might also be giving the impression that they are not interested. This could lead to more misunderstandings too.