What is great listening?

In future there’s going to be a great paucity of listeners with the social media and whatsapp pumping contents making people hyper deficit in attentiveness?

This is what i noticed when I saw one of my roommate being addicted to whatsapp. It provoked me to read some article about listening. I always think am a good listener ho love to hear when something tells me interesting. But appraisal of my listening ability with the keen understanding of cognitive skill made me realize that I am also a part of this illusionary world of dumping contents without any authentication of it.

Friends we come across many things in our daily lives which we barely pay attention like the common one for me being my cycle key chain. I would throw it after my usage and search it while the need arises. While school has thought us many knowledge it barely reminds me of keeping up-to-date of our common sense. In sociology there is a concept called phenomenology where people used to understand daily happening with their own sense of consciousness.

But how many have this sense of consciousness which we barely take note of. This article deals with my personal experience of improving listening skill. I once written BEC exam which is a basic level English course to improve the proficiency of candidates. It has the basic analysis of the skills like writing, reading, listening and speaking. Despite being fairly performing in academics i did not clear the exam. It was a moral defeat for the ego inside me to know that i failed in an exam first in my life. There is a great moment of embarrassment for anyone who faces a defeat, basically arises from the fact that your reputation among your friends tarnishes.

But that’s okay to be considerable as no one takes it as competitive among friends community. Lately I started watching many English debate programs. As the sociological phenomena says every individual is a different world in themselves every one has a perspective of particular issue. You can only break their ideology by effective listening.good listening is much more than being silent while other person talks.

Today morning I had a conversation with a film goofy who loves to watch films and be critical about it. He always tried to see things in an objective and embrace the art of cinema making. He quoted few Tamil movies like “paruthiveeran” to portray his views about cinema making which depends on the cultural heritage of the social backgrounds. To note this movie depicts a love story happening in a dry village.

But i counteracted him by saying how such scenes in the movie has shaped his psyche which in-turn reflects outside.The significant thing to note is i mentioned him an event when he shared with me an incident in the bus.The reason being mentioned is good listening was consistently seen as a two-way dialogue rather than one way speaker vs hearer interaction. The best conversations were active.

Any interactions that build a self esteem made the conversation a positive experience for other party, which generally doesn’t happen with the passive listeners. Everyone is eager to talk and the funnier part is they believe their view is the only right thing that exist in the world. It’s true that everyone’s voice has to be heard in a democracy but the worth of hearing it arises from the fact that the speaker has to earn ones opportunity rather providing a bunch of facts thrown at him.

This was happening in the early colonial administration where authoritative nature of orders has become powerful and their subordinates has no way but only to obey. But this century is information rich society where the world is at ones small pocket in the form of smart phone. In such a scenario good listening was seen as a cooperative conversation rather than waiting to throw bunch of ideas at each others face. One doesn’t need to agree to ones point but instead of waiting to listen, poor listeners identify fault in every other arguments. A good listener don’t want to debate but creates an aura of trying to help the one who made such argument instead of winning it.

Every book which says of winning argument of peers are dumb enough to operate under the illusion of intelligence that they have obtained from their past experience whether it’s through study or whatever form of experience. Such peers often pretend to listen and offer their suggestive points which hardly reaches the active listener and ends up in dumb trash at the brain. It often turns out to be unproductive conversation with passive efforts of every party involved in the process of listening.

Good listening was seen as a cooperative conversation. In this interactions, feedback flowed smoothly in both the directions with neither party becoming defensive about the comments made about each other. Modern day of gaining authority over others is not commanding respect from others. But patiently listening in trying to help each other without transcending a conversation into a debate. When one turns to accept suggestion from the speaker then one attracts the attention of others.

To sum up good listener being like a sponge that absorbs what other persons is saying,instead, they are like trampolines. Once an idea is bounced off from one-selves the active listener instead of absorbing ideas and energy, they amplify, energize and clarify one’s own thinking. Even they provoke others to speak up in which one has considered a specific topic as irrelevant.