Better Listener example essay topic

ARTICLE REVIEW The article I choose to review started off with the statement that, "If you could change your title from Chief Executive, what would you change it to?" . This caught my attention because I really had to think about this question and wasn't sure what I would change the title to. The Article is titled, "Are You Listening?" and it is written by Rebecca L. Morgan. Morgan Seminar Group published "Are You Listening" in 1994 and I found this article at web One reason I choose to read this article is because I enjoyed reading "The Power of Our Words" which is also by Rebecca L Morgan. I find it interesting to read about how people listen to other people, what types of listeners we are, and ways we can improve our listening skills. This article talks about listening in communication and reasons why people don't listen well.

In this article John Scully said that he would change the title of Chief Executive to, "Chief Listener". I think that was a good idea by John Scully. Our textbook mentions five main things you need to do to be a good listener. First you need to receive the message, then understand it, remember what you heard, evaluate that, and respond to the message (Unit 7).

You can't afford to miss any one of these steps because they are all crucial to listening. This article states that we know listening is important so why don't we listen better. Well I can recall some reasons that I have learned on why we don't listen better. In Unit 1 we learned that noise and context effect how we listen to a message and could distract us. Also in Unit 7 we learned about stereotyping, being bias, and prejudice which affect the way we might listen to someone. Other reasons why we don't listen better are that we are not focused on what the other person is saying, we might be to busy to give our undivided attention to the speaker, we could have something else on our mind, and we might not be interested or knowledgeable in what the speaker is saying.

Maybe we don't listen that good because we weren't taught by a professional how to listen. I remember taking reading, writing, science, math, and history in high school but never a listening class. I think that I am a good listener but sometimes I am an impatient listener. For example I listen really good to what people are saying but if something pops up in my head about the conversation I sometimes find myself eager to interrupt the speaker and start talking.

My reason for being an impatient listener is because I don't want to forget what it is I wanted to say especially if the speaker is telling a long story. Now that I notice myself doing this I just try and bite my tongue and let the speaker finish then take my turn talking. This article mentions that we think we know what the people in our life are going to say before they say anything so we tend to listen to them with only one ear. When we first meet someone we practice our best listening skills because we are not sure what they are going to say. In the beginning we don't know them good enough to just do some partial listening.

Unit 1 of our textbook teaches us about explanatory knowledge which is after you know a person really good you can start to predict and explain why they said or did something. To improve our listening we should use both ears and practice some immediacy in communication. We learned about immediacy in Unit 8 and it showed us that if we show interest and pay close attention to the speaker we will become a better listener. We have to show concern about the other person, which is empathic listening (Unit 8). Also be an active listener (Unit 7) by giving feedback or a positive compliment. Be friendly and show respect to the speaker.

In conclusion this was another good article by Rebecca L Morgan. I'm glad that I choose to read this article and I recommend it to everyone. This article had some useful information that I would like to touch upon. One quote said, "We need to be compulsive listeners and selective talkers" and that is some good advise for everyone.

This article made me realize in communication you could be being prejudice and not even see it so it is important to look at how you listen and pay close attention. We can all improve the way we listen we just need to figure out what kind of listener we are and work on fixing our bad skills. Then just put in some effort to become a better listener. Remember to practice listening to someone the way you would want someone else to listen to you.