Huh?

How many times have you responded to someone when you didn't even listen to what they had to say? Jianyin Lu says that "failure to listen is probably the cause of more interpersonal problems than any other aspect of human behavior" (Lu, 2005). Lu’s claim definitely resonates in my work environment. The abundance of “miscommunication” in my office could easily be better described as ineffective listening.

I agree most with Lu’s claim that effective listening is an active process that requires attention to the speaker in order to appropriately react and respond (Lu 2005). With practice, we can make our days at the office run a little smoother. My goal might be to do a little less multitasking while attempting to receive messages.

The majority of my ineffective listening stems from intrapersonal factors. So, new technology such as email allows me to focus less on global culture, sender’s position, or urgency of the message as suggested by Cornell’s Amy Newman (2007). Instead, computer mediated communication allows me to slow down and focus on encoding and decoding the true intended message.

References

Lu, J (2005, May). The Listening Style Inventory (LSI) as an instrument for improving listening skill. Sino-US English Teaching, 2(5),45-50.

Newman, A. (2007, January). Real-time computer-mediated communication: email and instant messaging simulation. Business Communication Quarterly, 70(4), 466-470.

Nelson, N (2000, June) Can computer-mediated communication democratize the workplace? Information Outlook, v4 i6 p18