Obstacles to Effective Listening

Obstacles to effective listening

        Good morning my fellow friends, today we will be going through “Obstacles to effective listening”. Effective listening is to be able to understand information conveyed by the speaker. It is a skill that every one of us should learn as it is vital in our career success. According to Borowski (2006), hearing happened in the ear whereas listening happened between the ears.”  There is however five obstacles to effective listening that will be discussed in this article.

          First obstacle of effective listening is preconceived impression of the speaker. Preconceived impression means an opinion formed beforehand without adequate evidence.  For example, we judge a speaker merely by his appearance, and we are not interested of what he or she might say.  This is because our mind had already made preconceived impression from how the speaker carried himself and form opinion that what they about to say is not worth listening. According to Owen (2011), a speaker’s speech delivery, tone of voices, distracting movements or an improper appearance can inhibit the listener ability to process the message.

        Secondly, having preconceived impression of the topics is also an obstacle to effective listening. This happened when we already have our own opinion or judgments on certain issue; we are not open minded to the issue and our brain automatically shut off any new ideas on the topic. Under this circumstance, we will miss out certain important facts or information that the speaker conveyed. For example, one already had an impression that history lesson is boring; hence during the lesson whatever teacher teaches and say will be deeming uninteresting.

Next, environmental distraction is another obstacle to effective listening. Environment distraction such as noises, temperatures, peoples and so on sometime will prevent effective listening. For example, the noise of the rain might be too loud causing the voice of the speaker cannot be heard clearly. In such events, it is very important for us to adapt to the situation and make necessary changes so that we can overcome our environment to concentrate.                

Inability to stay focused is also another roadblock to effective listening. This happened to fatigue or mentally tired listener. For example after working for 8 hours, having a briefing after it would not be as efficient as having one at early of the day, this is because employees are already exhausted after a hard day work of 8 hours. According to definition from Dictionary.com, fatigue means weariness from body or mental exertion.