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Module 17 - Listening 0
Module 17
Listening
LO 17-1 Explain good listening strategies for the workplace.
LO 17-2 Apply strategies for active listening.
LO 17-3 Apply techniques for acknowledgment responses.
LO 17-4 Recognize value in leadership through listening.
LO 17-5 Recognize value in active listening during disagreements.
Module Overview
Perhaps the most overlooked skill that should be taught in school is listening. Though we offer
little or no formal instruction in listening in our schools, we expect students to come fully
prepared to listen in class, take effective notes, and remember what we say. The same goes for
the business world—only what doesn’t get heard there can cost employees sales, goodwill,
business opportunities, and even their jobs.
Therefore, Kitty and Steve believe no business communication course is complete without some
attention to the skill—perhaps the art—of listening effectively. What makes the business world
even more challenging is that oral communication there may be organized differently, without
the signposts typical in classroom lectures.
Because listening is a critical skill that students will use daily, Kitty
and Steve recommend addressing the issues in this module early in
your course. As described throughout this module and in PP 17-3,
hearing—perceiving sounds—is not enough. Students must also
listen—decode and interpret sounds correctly.
Ironically, many of your students will believe they are very effective
listeners. Yet, you’ve probably experienced situations demonstrating otherwise; you may have
given instructions orally on how to complete an assignment, and a significant number of students
did the assignment wrong. Or you may have announced a change in due dates or what will be on
the next quiz, and yet students will swear you never made such an announcement.
Instructors are not the only ones who may get frustrated by such experiences. Many students
believe they heard you correctly—even if clearly they did not. Somewhere in the
communication process, a breakdown occurred. While listeners have no control over the
speaker, listeners can learn to modify their listening strategies to minimize such breakdowns.
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
17-1
Module 17 - Listening 0
In-Class Exercise: To illustrate how people of good intention can still mishear or
misinterpret oral communication, play the “telephone game.” Have students get in a
circle. (Or have them get into groups of six; Kitty has particular success working
with this format, where student groups often playfully compete with one another for
which group can best keep the original message intact.) Start the game by
whispering a message in the ear of the first student. The following message,
developed and copyrighted by Norman Sigband, works very well: “Every year at
State University, the eagles in front of the Psi Gamma fraternity house were
mysteriously sprayed during the night. Whenever this happened, it cost the Psi Gams
from $75-$100 to have the eagles cleaned. The Psi Gams complained to officials and
were promised by the president that if ever any students were caught painting the
eagles, they would be expelled from school.”
Write the message down so you can read it verbatim, but don’t let anyone see it.
(Use Appendix 17-A at the end of the exercise to show students what was written.)
Tell that student to whisper the message to the next person, and then that person to
the next person, and so on around the room. Everyone must remain silent except for
the student who is speaking. Have the last student say the message aloud. Chances
are it will quite different from the original message. Afterward, have students
brainstorm why they believe the message changed.
Norman Sigband, Communication for Management, (Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman,
1969). p. 582.
Teaching Tip: Ask students to share experiences where they believe someone they
were speaking to was not listening. How could they tell? How did it make them
feel? Have students ever pretended to be listening to someone else when they
weren’t? What behaviors did they use to pretend? Why?
In-Class Exercise: If you’ve covered Module 2 already, have students in groups of
3-5 reconstruct the Communication Model (p. 23). If not, give them ten minutes to
review it in class. Once they’ve done so, have them spend another 10 minutes
examining where in the process communication can break down due to faulty
listening. Then have groups share their conclusions. What kinds of “noise” can
interfere with oral communication? How might the sender overcome such noise?
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
17-2
Module 17 - Listening 0
Teaching Tip: Hearing- and sight-challenged students may have different strategies
for listening than your other students. Ask what techniques work for them. Have
they experienced frustration in communicating with others? Have others with them?
What might people do to help ensure more successful oral communication with
someone who is hearing- or sight-challenged? (Where possible, find campus
resources that might be available to help educate students about communicating with
people with different needs.)
What’s in This Supplement
This supplement is organized around the major questions posed in Module 17. It covers
Part 1: Key Lecture Points, Teaching Tips, and In-Class Exercises Page 288
Part 2: Answers to Textbook Assignments Page 294
Part 3: Appendixes of Handouts/Transparency Masters Page 295
PowerPoint presentations can be found at our Web page at www.mhhe.com/bcs6e.
Questions (with answers) suitable for quizzes are in the Instructor’s Test Bank. For student
practice quizzes with answers, see our Web page.
Part 1: Key Lecture Points, Teaching Tips, and In-Class Exercises
What do good listeners do? LO 17-1
They consciously follow four practices.
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
17-3
Module 17 - Listening 0
Like you-attitude, good listening requires focus on the other person, with energy and enthusiasm.
Just because people hear someone else’s words does not mean they have listened effectively—
properly decoding what they have heard is instrumental to the listening process.
In the modern work world, there are plenty of distractions to keep people from hearing correctly
—telephones ringing, the hum of a computer, the sound of people talking in a hallway, music
drifting in from another office, or thoughts about other issues or pressures from the job. Good
listeners learn to “tune out” these distractions, instead focusing on the speaker.
As PP 17-4 shows, good listeners follow four basic strategies:
Pay attention.
Teaching Tip: Ask students what steps they take to make
sure they’re paying attention, either in class or in other
situations. What distracts them? How do they keep
focused on the speaker at hand? Why is it important to do so? What could they do
differently to be more effective?
Focus on the other speaker(s) in a generous way.
Teaching Tip: Americans often say they live in a very negative society—nightly, the
media presents “bad news,” people are cynical about the political process, and there
are problems in our institutions, such as schools and social services. Is American
society truly negative? Does that mean Americans are taught to look at things
negatively? If so, what steps could we/they take to be more generous in our/their
conclusions? How could we/they translate these steps into the listening process?
Avoid making assumptions.
Teaching Tip: Have students share situations where they’ve either made assumptions
about the other speaker or felt that someone made assumptions about them. Were
the assumptions correct? If not, what problems did making assumptions lead to?
How did it feel to misjudge? To be misjudged?
Listen for feelings as well as for facts.
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
17-4
Module 17 - Listening 0
Teaching Tip: “Just the facts,” was a phrase popular with a TV detective years ago.
But are the facts enough? In any human interaction, there will always be emotional
content. Ask students what steps they take to gauge the feelings of a speaker, as well
as their own feelings, when communicating. What could they do to improve?
In-Class Exercise: To practice the four techniques, have students spend 10 minutes
sharing information about themselves with a partner. Then, go around the room and
have students report three things about the person they spoke with. See how many
students report emotional colorings as well as facts.
In-Class Exercise: Have students attend an on-campus lecture or presentation and
test out their listening abilities. Let the students give a short oral report to the class
on what they heard and how the listening techniques may have helped them.
What is active listening? LO 17-2
Feeding back the literal meaning, or the emotional content, or both.
Good listeners practice active listening (PP 17-9). In other words, they
practice a reciprocal process, responding to the speaker’s words and sharing
their thoughts and feelings. While some situations may not easily lend
themselves to all active listening—listening to a speaker in a large concert
hall, for instance—most interactions between people allow for it.
As PP 17-10 shows, active listeners participate in the oral communication
process through five distinct strategies:
Paraphrase content.
In-Class Exercise: Have students complete Exercise 17.9 (p.
295) in class. Give them 10-15 minutes, and then have them
share responses. What did students learn from this exchange?
Mirror the speaker’s feelings.
Teaching Tip: Learning to understand someone else’s feelings is a function of
empathy. For more information on empathy and you-attitude, points students to
Module 6.
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
17-5
Module 17 - Listening 0
State your own feelings.
Ask for information or clarification.
In-Class Exercise: For homework, have students Exercise 17.10 (p. 295). Those
not working can interview students in their dorms or family members who are
working. Have students share their findings with others in class during a
10-15-minute discussion.
Offer to help solve the problem.
As the name suggests, active listening requires the listener share responsibility for helping ensure
communication occurs correctly. Blocking responses, as illustrated in Figure 17.1 (p. 292) and
on Appendix 17-B, interfere with oral communication—students should use active listening to
counter the effects.
In-Class Exercise: Have students partner up and spend 10-15 minutes role-playing
the active listening responses to blocking responses. Let one student say the
blocking response and the other student respond with the appropriate active listening
response. Then switch. Afterward, have students share their thoughts and feelings—
can they identify other situations when the active listening response would work?
Let students share their findings with the rest of the class.
How do I show people that I’m listening to them? LO 17-3
Acknowledge their comments in words, in nonverbal symbols, and in actions.
Acknowledgement responses are important for communicating to others
that you are listening. As PP 17-12 shows, these include nods, uh huhs,
smiles, and frowns. But remind students that not all cultures share the
same acknowledgement responses—and acknowledgement responses
may not work with people who are hearing- or sight-challenged. In fact,
miscommunication can occur when communicators use
acknowledgement responses differently.
Listeners should make sure they understand the culture of the person they’re speaking to in order
to better understand the acknowledgement response. For more information, have students read
Module 3.
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
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Module 17 - Listening 0
Teaching Tip: Have students share experiences where they’ve been confused by the
acknowledgement response of another person. What was the response? Why was it
confusing? What could the student have done differently in the situation to
minimize the problem? What would they have wanted from the speaker to make
things more clear?
In-Class Exercise: Have students complete Exercise 17.12 (p. 295) as homework or,
where applicable, in class. The next class period, ask students to share their
findings.
Leading by listening LO 17-4
The experiences of D. Michael Abrashoff make for a good case study of how to lead by
listening. As commanding officer of the U.S.S. Benfold, Abrashoff helped foster an
environment of upward communication, allowing the officers and crew of the ship to
communicate openly about ways to improve the vessel and shipboard life:
D. Michael Abrashoff led by listening.
As captain of the U.S.S. Benfold, he listened to what his crew wanted.
One hundred percent of his career sailors re-upped with him.
At $100,000 a sailor for recruiting, the retention rate saved $1.6
million.
The Benfold returned $1.4 million of its annual budget to the U.S.
Navy.
More importantly, students can learn that good leaders in any walk of life always listen to
the people they lead.
Can I use these techniques if I really disagree with someone? LO 17-5
Yes!
Good listening skills can easily disappear when we’re upset—
therefore, encourage students to practice good listening skills
and adhere to them in all business situations. One particularly
difficult situation occurs when the boss criticizes an employee.
Here, both parties must take extra care to listen carefully to
what each is saying. That way, additional problems can be
avoided. Effective listening skills also enable individuals to find
out why their opponents object to programs or ideas that they support. Remind students that
if they really listen to people they disagree with, they show they respect them (PP 17-13).
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
17-7
Module 17 - Listening 0
Teaching Tip: Have students share experiences where they have been criticized by
a boss. What was their first reaction? Were they good listeners or did they find
themselves “tuning out” the boss? Did they overreact emotionally, later realizing
that the boss was only trying to help? What advice could they give to avoid
problems in the future?
Last Word: Listening is a skill best learned through practice. Encourage students to
develop their skills—once they’ve learned the basics, try to “wean” them from
relying on visual aids when you speak in class; instead, incorporate opportunities for
them to use their listening skills when receiving instructions in class, as well as
discussing terms and concepts. Expect students to maintain an air of
professionalism in class, which can include minimizing extraneous conversations
and focusing instead on those directly involving your course (imagine that!).
© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
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