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4.3: Listening Styles

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    14627
    • Anonymous
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    Learning Objectives
    1. Understand the nature of listening styles.
    2. Explain the people listening style.
    3. Explain the action listening style.
    4. Explain the content listening style.
    5. Explain the time listening style.
    4.2.0.jpg
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): John Benson – Listening Styles – CC BY 2.0.
     

    If listening were easy, and if all people went about it in the same way, the task for a public speaker would be much easier. Even Aristotle, over 2,000 years ago, recognized that listeners in his audience were varied in listening style. He differentiated them as follows:

    Rhetoric falls into three divisions, determined by the three classes of listeners to speeches. For of the three elements in speech-making—speaker, subject, and person addressed—it is the last one, the hearer, that determines the speech’s end and object. The hearer must be either a judge, with a decision to make about things past or future, or an observer. A member of the assembly decides about future events, a juryman about past events: while those who merely decide on the orator’s skill are observers (Aristotle, c. 350 BCE).

    Thus Aristotle classified listeners into those who would be using the speech to make decisions about past events, those who would make decisions affecting the future, and those who would evaluate the speaker’s skills. This is all the more remarkable when we consider that Aristotle’s audiences were composed exclusively of male citizens of one city-state, all prosperous property owners.

    Our audiences today are likely to be much more diverse. Think about the classroom audience that will listen to our speeches in this course. Our classmates come from many different religious, ethnic, ability, and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of them may speak English as a second language. Some might be survivors of war-torn parts of the world such as Afghanistan, Yemen, or Ethiopia. Being mindful of such differences will help us prepare a speech in which we minimize the potential for misunderstanding.

    Part of the potential for misunderstanding is the difference in listening styles. In an article in the International Journal of Listening, Watson, Barker, and Weaver (Watson, et al., 1995) identified four listening styles: people, action, content, and time. While there are several different approaches to understanding listening styles and preferences, the following four listening styles are utilized most often across disciplines:

    People

    The people-oriented listener is interested in the speaker. People-oriented listeners listen to the message in order to learn how the speaker thinks and how they feel about their message. For instance, when people-oriented listeners listen to an interview with a famous rap artist, they are likely to be more curious about the artist as an individual than about music, even though the people-oriented listener might also appreciate the artist’s work. If an audience member (receiver) is a people-oriented listener, she, he, or they might have certain expectations about questions that will be answered, such as: Does the artist feel successful? What’s it like to be famous? What kind of educational background does he or she have? In the same way, if we’re listening to a doctor who responded to the earthquake crisis in Haiti, we might be more interested in the doctor as a person than in the state of affairs for Haitians. Why did he or she go to Haiti? How did he or she get away from his or her normal practice and patients? How many lives did he or she save? We might be less interested in the equally important and urgent needs for food, shelter, and sanitation following the earthquake.

    The people-oriented listener is likely to be more attentive to the speaker than to the message. People-oriented listeners understand that the message is about what is important to the speaker.

    Action

    Action-oriented listeners are primarily interested in finding out what the speaker hopes to accomplish through the message. Does the speaker want votes, donations, volunteers, or something else? It’s sometimes difficult for an action-oriented speaker to listen through the descriptions, evidence, and explanations with which a speaker builds his, her, or their case.

    Action-oriented listening is sometimes called task-oriented listening. In it, the listener seeks a clear message about what needs to be done, and might have less patience for listening to the reasons behind the task. This can be especially true if the reasons are complicated. For example, when we are passengers on an airplane waiting to push back from the gate, a flight attendant delivers a brief speech called the preflight safety briefing. The flight attendant does not read the findings of a safety study or the regulations about seat belts. The flight attendant doesn’t explain that the content of his, her, or their speech is actually mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Instead, the attendant says only to buckle up so we can leave. An action-oriented listener finds “buckling up” a more compelling message than a message about the underlying reasons.

    Content

    Content-oriented listeners are interested in the message itself, whether it makes sense, what it means, and whether it’s accurate. When we give speeches, many members of our classroom audience will be content-oriented listeners who will be interested in learning from us. We therefore have an obligation to represent the truth as accurately as possible. We can emphasize an idea, but if we exaggerate, we could lose credibility in the minds of our content-oriented audience members. We can advocate ideas that are important to us, but if we omit important limitations, we are withholding part of the truth and could leave our audience with an inaccurate view.

    Imagine delivering a speech on the plight of orphans in Syria. If we just talk about the fact that there are over forty-five million orphaned Syrians, but don’t explain why, we will sound like an infomercial. In such an instance, our audience’s response is likely to be less enthusiastic than we might want. Instead, content-oriented listeners want to listen to well-developed information with solid explanations.

    Time

    People using a time-oriented listening style prefer a message that gets to the point quickly. Time-oriented listeners can become impatient with slow delivery or lengthy explanations. This kind of listener may be receptive for only a brief amount of time and may become rude or even hostile if the speaker expects a longer focus of attention. Time-oriented listeners convey their impatience through eye rolling, shifting about in their seats, checking their cell phones, and other inappropriate behaviors. If asked to speak to a group of middle-school students, the speaker needs to realize that their attention spans are simply not as long as those of college students. This is an important reason speeches to young audiences must be shorter, or broken up by more variety than speeches to adults.

    Let's consider a professional situation, some audience members will have real time constraints, not merely perceived ones. Imagine being asked to deliver a speech on a new project to the board of directors of a local corporation. Chances are the people on the board of directors are all pressed for time. If the speech is long and filled with overly detailed information, time-oriented listeners will simply start to tune the speaker out. Obviously, if time-oriented listeners start tuning out, they will not be listening to the message. This is not the same thing as being a time-oriented listener who might be less interested in the message content than in its length.

    Key Takeaways

    • A listening style is a general manner in which an individual attends to the messages of another person.
    • People-oriented listeners pay attention to the personal details of a speaker and not to the speaker’s actual message.
    • Action-oriented listeners pay attention to the physical actions a speaker wants the listener to engage in.
    • Content-oriented listeners pay attention to the meaning and credibility of a speaker’s message.
    • Time-oriented listeners pay attention to messages that are short and concise as a result of limited attention spans or limited time commitments.

    Exercises

    1. In a small group, discuss what each person’s usual listening style is. Under what circumstances might you practice a different listening style?
    2. Make a list of benefits and drawbacks to each of the listening styles discussed in this section.
    3. As you prepare for your next speech, identify ways that you can adapt your message to each of the listening styles noted in this section.

    References

    • Aristotle. (c. 350 BCE). Rhetoric (W. Rhys Roberts, Trans.). Book I, Part 3, para. 1. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html.
    • Watson, K. W., Barker, L. L., & Weaver, J. B., III. (1995). The listening styles profile (LSP-16): Development and validation of an instrument to assess four listening styles. International Journal of Listening, 9, 1–13.

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