Barriers to communication
- Message overload: we hear too much speech every day to listen carefully to all of it; we must let our attention wander sometimes.
- Preoccupation: we are busy thinking about something else, which seems more important to us at the time.
- Rapid thought: we are able to understand speech much faster than people are capable of speaking, so our minds tend to wander in the wait time.
- Effort: listening carefully is hard work and some people are unwilling to expend the effort to do it well.
- External noise: there are distractions all around us and they make it difficult to pay attention to others.
- Hearing problems: some people have physiological hearing problems. This can cause frustration for both speaker and listener.
- Faulty assumptions: we sometimes make assumptions that prevent us from listening. For example, if someone is speaking about a topic we are familiar with, we may think we've heard it all before. Some people will assume that a topic is not important and will stop paying attention.
- Lack of apparent advantages: sometimes we don?t see the advantage of listening to others because we see a bigger advantage in talking. Persuasive speech lets you influence others and can win you attention and respect. Talking lets you release energy in a way that listening can't. Since speaking seems to be more advantageous, people often miss the advantages of listening.
- Lack of training: many people think listening is a natural skill, like breathing, and that they don?t need to learn or practise natural skills. Listening is a skill that takes practice.
- Pretending: to listen but having something else on your mind.
- Stage-hogging: only being interested in talking about your own ideas and not caring what anyone else has to say.
- Selective listening: only paying attention to things that interest you.
- Insulated listening: purposely not paying attention to something you do not want to hear, like reminders about a job that has to be done.
- Defensive listening: when you think that everything the other person says is an attack on you.
- Ambushing: listening carefully to collect information that can be used against the person at a later time.
- Insensitive listening: when you don?t try to look beyond the words of a person to understand things that are not being said. You just listen to the words and take them at surface value. For example, when you ask how your friend is and she says ?fine? but has tears in her eyes and a shaky voice, you are an insensitive listener if you only hear her say she?s ?fine? and don?t realize that her body language tells you she is upset.