7 Barriers to Listening Effectively

This article comes from Entrepreneur.

7 Barriers to Listening Effectively

Here are seven different types of listening that can negatively impact our ability to effectively connect with and truly hear what others have to say.

1. Evaluative listening.

This listening behavior is on display when the person is either constantly agreeing or disagreeing with you. They evaluate everything you say from their perspective. The problem with this type of listening is that it is based on a selective perspective — their own.

Consequently, they may likely miss critical information that is offered by others. Their constant evaluation may end up turning the conversation into a sort of verbal jousting match where one person says something and the other person counters what he or she said.

This then causes the first person to offer a counter-argument to the person’s response.

2. Self-protective listening.

This is the type of listening that I experienced with the person I was coaching. He was so filled with negative emotion and so focused on telling his story, that there was no room for anything else.

These negative emotions seemed to further hijack rationality as he continued to protect his interpretation of the situation and the legitimacy of his feelings.

3. Assumptive listening.

This is probably one of the most common and difficult forms of poor listening that all of us struggle to overcome. This type of listening occurs when we assume we know what the person will say or what they want.

We try to figure out what the person is thinking or wanting rather than listening to what the person is actually saying. Setting aside our assumptions about people is challenging because of the past experience or history that we have with them.

In order to overcome this negative form of listening, we must set our thinking aside and give our full attention to the individual and their message, allowing them time to express their thoughts and feelings.

4. Judgmental listening.

This type of listening takes the approach of criticizing all that the person says or does. You can tell when a person is engaged in this listening behavior because they disagree, condemn or criticize whatever someone else may offer.

Unfortunately, when someone responds this way, the other person becomes tired or afraid of being put down, so they quit speaking up and sharing their perspective. They withdraw and will eventually become completely disengaged.

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