There are lots of potential distractions. If you can't avoid them, minimize them. You do that by focusing totally on the speaker and paying attention. Here are four specific techniques that will help you concentrate while listening:
1. Take a deep breath. This will prevent you from interrupting, and will provide your brain with invigorating oxygen. Try it now, and as you're doing it, try to speak. It doesn't work very well, does it
2. Consciously decide to listen. No matter who's speaking, pay attention and listen for information that's particularly interesting or useful. You never know what you might learn. As show-biz wit Wilson Mizner once said, "A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something."
3. Mentally paraphrase what the speaker is saying. This will prevent you from daydreaming about irrelevant and superfluous topics. You'll concentrate on the speaker instead of yourself.
4. Maintain eye contact. Where your eyes focus, your ears follow. You're most likely to listen to what you are looking at.
So, if you can't eliminate a distraction, use one or more of these techniques-breathe deeply, decide to listen, paraphrase, or maintain eye contact. They'll help you handle the distractions.
There are five basic reasons we fail to listen well. First, listening takes effort. As I said, it's more than just keeping quiet. It means really concentrating on the other person. An active listener registers increased blood pressure, a higher pulse rate, and more perspiration. Because it takes so much effort, a lot of people just don't listen.
Second, there's now enormous competition for our attention from radio, TV, movies, computers, books and magazines, and much more. With all these incoming stimuli, we've learned to screen out information we deem irrelevant. Unfortunately, we also screen out things that are important.
Here's a third reason why we don't listen well: We think we already know what someone is going to say. We assume that we have a full understanding right from the start, so we jump in and interrupt. We don't take the time required to hear people out.
The fourth reason has to do with the speed gap-the difference between how fast we talk and how fast we listen. The average person speaks at about 135 to 175 words a minute, but comprehends at 400 to 500 words a minute. For the person who's not listening well, that's plenty of time to jump to conclusions, daydream, plan a reply, or mentally argue with the speaker. At least that's how poor listeners spend the time.
And the fifth reason we don't listen well is because we don't know how. We do more listening than speaking, reading, or writing. But I bet you've never had a course in listening, have you?
I think listening is the most neglected and least understood of all the aspects of communication. And, largely, this weak link springs from bad habits. In short, we haven't been trained to listen.
