REASONS OF POOR LISTENING

Listening is a bit complex process that starts from hearing, passes through decoding, storing, evaluating and responding to the message. The main reasons of poor listening are as follows:

1. Cultural Differences:

Different cultures convey different meanings as per their culture. So, to understand the correct meaning of sender becomes very challenging job for the receiver.

Let us see an example:

The sign of ‘Ok’ in U.K and USA means ‘ok’. In the culture of Brazil, it is considered as an insult. Similarly, in Nepalese culture it means ‘awesome’.

2. Educational differences:

Educational differences creates a fear in the mind of the listener. The listener thinks that, he is not smart enough to understand the complete message.

Let us see an example:

We can see it, when a MBA post graduates attends the technical meeting of Engineers or Doctors, listening becomes poor because of the educational differences.

3. Family background:

The family background may lead to poor listening. There may be several viewpoints (developed over a certain period of time) about the same thing - that creates bias in understanding the message of sender.

4. Attitude Difference:

Attitude differences also results poor listening.

According to S.P.Robbins :

“Attitudes are evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people or events”

The Attitude differences like:

• Eagerness to speak more

• Passing remarks

• Passing comments

• criticizing others

• Being judgmental

• Interrupting in between etc.

- makes the listener poor. 

5. Psychological Reason:

As per research, it is found that most of the people speaking speed is at about 120 to 150 words per minute. Similarly, the processing speed of the audio is up to 500 or more words per minute. There is sufficient gap found in the speaking speed and listening speed.

So, if the receiver’s brain is left unsupervised, then the listener will surely start day dreaming or being engaged in other activities psychologically. Therefore, psychological reason can also lead to poor listening.

6. Other reasons :

• Not paying attention to the speaker.

• Jumping to conclusion.

• Focus on personal gestures.

• Pretend as if listening.

• Showing disinterest

• Being Selective in filtering message.

pic. Credit: navicate.org