I chose to look at the barriers to active listening in chapter 2 of Small Group and Team Communication and noticed that lack of interest was one of them. As I was looking at many of my classmates posts regarding the four components of listening, I noticed that lack of interest was an issue in many instances. Generally we face this problem because “we find it inherently uninteresting or because we have determined it is too difficult for us to understand.” (Sherblom/Harris, 2008, pg. 135) When this occurs we may become bored, impatient, or even start to day dream.
I have a fairly young boss and he often times likes to tell us his stories. Many times he tells us things that I am not interested in, so I therefore start to daydream or become preoccupied with something else. I feel bad for doing this because I know it is rude; however this is a really bad habit of mine. I think many of you can relate to my story in one way or another as we all tend to have certain topics that we have very minimal interest in. In order to break this habit Sherblom and Harris suggest that we “tell ourselves that since we are there at the moment we might as well pay attention to the content of the discussion.” (Sherblom/Harris, 2008, pg. 135)
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I also have a young boss and she likes to tell us stories of when she first started with the company. Although I chose lack of interest as a barrier in active listening, this is one person I was interested in listening to. My boss is 5 years older than I am, yet she has been with the company as a manager for 4 years and was a top personal banker previously. When she tells me her success stories and gives me advice in pursuing management after graduation, I listen! I love that she is motivational and believes in me because that gives me encouragement to continue pursuing my career. Since her stories are not one sided (only success), it gives me insight to struggles she had to overcome and how she did so. Although lack of interest can have a negative effect in communication, it’s helpful if we can try to connect to ultimately gain interest.
ReplyDeletePocahonatas,
ReplyDeleteI have a similar experience of lack of interest example that happens in one of my classmate in communication class.
At the first day of this semester, most of the students introduced themselves that would be very helpful to know everyone in the coming weeks. In the class, there was a classmate who was well experienced in public speaking and introduced himself about five minutes that completely grabbed my attention to him. In accordance with his speaking, I have learnt the self-confidence and body language that were the crucial elements to the public speaking.
During the past few weeks, when the teacher wanted some students to talk about the news or events which happened in the week that was the usual practice and requirement to get grades in class. Surprisingly, that classmate always talked at the first and without stopping. Under this issue, I was lacking of interest to listen to his story because he was so bored and showed off his ability in speaking. In my point of view, a well experience speaker should know how to control himself or herself and respect to other people in the publicity, in the office as well as in class.
Thank you,
Kam