Critical review of research articles for the listening skill development area
Listening
Listening plays a crucial role in the organization as far as communication is concerned. Listening improves the relationship between the management and staff members. Furthermore, it enhances the relationship among employees of the organization. In the organization, listening plays a role in enhancing interactions between the organization and its customers. This is because employees who listen to the demands of customers offer quality services.
Listening entails giving other people full attention and maintaining the eye contact. An individual should give other people enough time to express themselves before rephrasing the points and figuring out whether the points make sense (Northouse 2007, p. 39). If the speaker is not clear, the listener is supposed to ask questions so that he or she may understand the message well.
Content and context are the two main aspects of listening. Content refers to the actual words or symbols contained in the message, which is referred to as a language. Context refers to the way the information is delivered to the sender. Listening skills are extremely valuable when transacting business in the organization. It is critical for an employee, as well as the management, to listen carefully to other individuals in order to delineate facts from abstract ideas. This paper talks about the dynamics of listening. The paper evaluates three articles in order to understand the importance and features listening in the organization.
Summary
The first article talks about difficulties experienced by doctors when serving patients. Patients rarely disclose pertinent information that may help doctors in diagnosing the disease. A patient would simply give a clue, which forces a doctor to be attentive in order to grasp relevant information. The authors of the article urge doctors to develop strong listening skills if they are to satisfy patients. The second article addresses the challenges experienced by caregivers in their daily lives.
The authors observe that caregivers have full control of their clients. This is because they are perceived to provide essential services that are not found in any other place. Therefore, caregivers tend to control patients in any communication context. For a doctor to control a patient, effective listening must be adopted. The third article talks about the role of listening in an organization. The scholar equates listening to learning because there is no away an individual can learn new things in the organization without listening to the instructions carefully. The scholar posits further that listening has been relied upon in organizations since the ancient times.
Review of Articles
Lang, M & Floyd, B 2004, “Clues to Patients’ Explanations and Concerns About Their Illnesses – A Call for Active Listening,” Forrest, Archives of Family Medicine, Vol. 9, no 3, pp 222-227.
The Lang and Floyd undertook a study to determine the main communication challenges experienced by medical practitioners in their field. They noted that communication is critical in the process of offering medical services in any medical organization. They claimed that certain clues exist in an organization, which in influence the communication process. In other words, patients fail to explain effectively their problems, which interfere with service delivery.
Lang and Floyd used the findings of the study to develop taxonomy of clues, which are considered extremely beneficial in service delivery. The clues suggested that active listening would enhance quality service delivery in the medical field (Lang & Floyd 2004, p. 1007). Medical practitioners must be willing to take an extra mile to ensure that the concerns of patients are resolved in time. This would only be possible if they listen carefully to the concerns raised by patients.
The researchers conducted a qualitative study that incorporated videotape examination, post interviewing consultation and interpersonal process recall. The findings of their study confirmed that patients go through various problems. The problems faced by patients could lead to the construction of a certain model referred to as an explanatory model. The model suggests that patients are unwilling to share certain information with doctors, which might lead to serious health problems.
Patients lack a clear communication technique that would help them disclose pertinent information regarding their health. Only few patients are would be willing to disclose critical health information to doctors. Lang and Floyd concluded that patients express feelings, ideas, and information through clues. Therefore, doctors must develop strong communication skills, such as listening skills, in order to understand the clues.
Without strong communication skills, doctors would not be able to offer quality services to their clients. The scholars proposed taxonomy of clues including expression of feelings, comprehension of symptoms, speech clues, individual narratives, and conduct clues. In their recommendation, the researchers observed that doctors must understand the clues of patients for them to offer modern medical services. The clues could only be understood if doctors develop high quality communication skills such as listening skills.
In their study, the researchers noted that patients have certain clues that are to be understood through application of listening skills. However, they do not explain how an individual can acquire the listening skills. Even though communication skills are essential to doctors, interpretive skills are equally of exceptional significance. Lang and Floyd do not explain the relationship between interpretive and listening skills. The doctor should use communication skills to understand and interpret the problems facing patients. Furthermore, their methodology is misleading because qualitative methods cannot give the exact number of patients failing to expose their problems. Since patients are usually in pain, they would be willing to share any information that would improve their health. In such a study, quantitative methods would help in identifying the number of patients with difficulties exposing their health problems.
Cocksedge, S & Carl, M 2005, “The Listening Loop: a model of choice about clues within primary care consultations”, Medical Education, Vol. 39, no. 10, pp 999-1010.
Cocksedge and Carl conducted a study in 2005 to establish the importance of listening in medical practices in England. In a medical setting, doctors have full control of the communication context. This implies that they control the behavior of patients. Patients, on the other hand, simply expected to respond to questions posed to them. However, the two researchers suggested in their research finding that doctors must be willing to go a notch higher to engage patients in friendly conversations as compared to neglecting their demands.
This will be achieved if only doctors incorporate the communication skills such listening into their practices. Through interactive communication, doctors would distinguish the delicate clues that patients give. The researchers identified some ways through which doctors could detect the subtle clues that patients give (Cocksedge & Carl 2005, p. 1005). From a combination of these factors, Cocksedge and Carl developed a model referred to as listening loop model, which might be utilized in understanding the behavior of patients.
In the study, the researchers aimed at confirming the hypothesis that doctors are expected to pick up and check out patients’ cues. However, the scholars noted that even though doctors have always wanted to pick up cues from patients, some non-verbal signals are frequently missed or ignored. Their main aim was therefore to investigate the views of general practitioners in the field of medicine. Medical practitioners are expected to initiate listening instead of ignoring patients during interactions.
Cocksedge and Carl employed a qualitative research design whereby analysis was done through constant comparison. The researchers interviewed practitioners with over five years experience in rural England. The interview guide used was semi-structured. Before collecting the views of doctors in rural areas, Cocksedge and Carl conducted a pilot study to determine whether the study would be viable.
The results of the study showed that doctors do not engage in interactive communication. Twenty-three out of twenty-four doctors were interviewed successfully. The results from the analysis indicated that there was a need for doctors to engage in interactive interactions. However, a number of factors hinder the performance of doctors. These factors include work overload, personal attitudes, and the communication context. In this regard, doctors would frequently employ some tactics to avoid the interactive communication. Some of these tactics include reassuring, switching to a different topic, creating unnecessary interruptions, being authoritative, and using non-verbal language.
Since doctors come up with a tactic to prevent patients from expressing their ideas, the problems affecting patients are never resolved fully. They termed this communication as a listening loop. They concluded their findings by observing that listening loop is a model that helps in understanding the interaction between patients and doctors. Therefore, doctors come up with communication barriers that prevent patients from giving critical information. Critical information would enhance service delivery.
The findings of the two researchers are valid. However, the use of semi-structured interview guide invalidates their findings. Interview guides should not be structured because they may mislead responds. Respondents are expected to give their views without the influence of the researcher.
Coghlan, D & Jacobs, C 2004, “The Role of Listening in Organizational Learning,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2005, Vol. 41, no. 1, 428-448.
Coghlan and Jacobs investigated the role that listening plays in the organization. For the management to deal with challenging questions accurately, listening must be embraced. If listening skills were applied effectively in the organization, an organization would experience change, which comes in the form of response repertoire. The ancient communication models emphasized on the need for stimulus-response heuristic model while modern communication models, such as information processing model, stress social learning model (Coghlan & Jacobs 2004, p. 2).
Social learning model is based on conversations meaning that organizational leaders must pay attention to what to others say. Apart from listening, the social learning model suggests that speech should be combined with listening to achieve organization goals. However, speech cannot work without proper application of listening skills. For a speech to take place effectively, listeners must decode the information accurately.
The two researchers wanted to evaluate the relationship between listening and leadership in the organization. In particular, they were interested in evaluating the relevance of listening in leadership groups. Their findings confirmed that leadership is closely related to listening. In fact, listening influences the performance of a leader. A true leader should possess strong listening skills. Through listening, the leader can understand the wishes of clients and employees. The research hypothesis was that listening affects leadership in small groups. They interviewed fifty-one students belonging to the same class. The students lacked leadership skills (Johnson & Belcher 1998, p. 456).
After twelve weeks, the researchers issued semi-structured interview guides to these students. Apart from the use of interview guides, the researchers videotaped the views of students for further analysis. The researchers used specialized data analysis instruments to evaluate the relationship between leadership and communication. Some the tools used included listening perception instruments, leadership-perceptions instruments and recall instrument. Through the recorded information, the researchers coded listening efficiency, leadership activities, and recall. The findings of the study revealed that a strong relationship between leadership variables and communication variables exit.
Conclusion
The first part of this article focused on summarizing the main views of scholars as regards to listening skills. The scholars talk about the role that listening plays in enhancing effective communication in the organization, as well as minimizing the chances of conflict. Without effective listening, the three articles suggest that a breakdown in communication would be encountered in the organization.
The section conducts a critical review of the articles, by looking at their strengths and weaknesses. Researchers of the three articles employ strong methodologies, but their analyses are defective because they do not allow secondary data analyses. The three articles used the questionnaire as the main method of data collection. However, the results would be strong if other methods of data collection, such as the interview, were incorporated. It can be concluded from the articles that listening plays an important in resolving issues that would threaten the operations of the organization.
Implementation of the listening skill development plan
Introduction
This part flows directly from the previous part. In any social setting, listening skills are extremely influential. I chose listening skills because they are critical as far as the establishment of business relationships are concerned. An individual cannot claim to be a persuasive speaker if he or she does not understand the dynamics of listening. An individual must be interested in what others say if he or she is to be a persuasive speaker. Therefore, listening is the core of communication skills (Bass & Bass 2008, p. 10). An individual must be interested in the views, feelings, ideas, and thoughts of others in order to be declared a strong leader. Moreover, he or she must possess a skill of how to extract critical information form a speaker.
In this regard, I decided to take the views of my friends regarding the role of listening. Through this activity, I intend to prove the hypothesis that good speakers are known to ease tension from the speaker by helping the speaker articulate his or her views. This means that an accomplished speaker must not be biased but instead he or she must cultivate the right personality. In order to accomplish my objective, I came up with a number of questions that I asked my friends in the local church. They include the following:
- What is your view regarding the importance of listening
- Is listening important in a group meeting
- Does ineffective listening lead to conflicts in the group
- How would you employ listening skills to solve conflicts in your group
Through the above questions, my main objective would be to check whether listening skills are affected by the personality of group members. In other words, the objective of the study is to establish whether all group members understand listening skills in the same way. It is true that listening plays a key role is preventing conflicts in groups. My objective would therefore to observe differences relating to the meaning of listening. This will be achieved through asking the above-mentioned questions.
Description of the Sample Group
I chose a group of my friends from the local church. Since I interact with the group often, it would help me test my listening skills. Each Sunday at around 8.30 am, we always meet at the local church. Each member gives an account of his life before the service starts. In the group, communication skills are valuable because they help us understand the views of each other. However, there is no clear procedure followed during interaction. The group is made of young individuals aged between twenty years and twenty-four years. All group members are in college or university taking various courses. In the group, I interviewed two members, including Tom and Charles.
Discussion
Charles and Tom were interviewed separately meaning that the answers they gave varied greatly. This is how the interview with Charles went:
Q: What is your view regarding the importance of listening
A: Listening plays an important role in the group, as well as in organizations. Without listening, it would be difficult to deduce the viewpoints and opinions of other members in the group. In other words, a group cannot executive its objectives without employing developing strong listening skills. Listening is an important skill that each individual should strive to achieve.
Q: Is listening important in a group meeting
A: As earlier noted, listening is a skill that applies in important functions, group meetings included. In fact, a group meeting cannot take place without group members listening to the views of others. For a meeting to be declared productive, listening skills are necessary. Listening generates a win-win situation in the group.
Q: Does ineffective listening lead to conflicts in the group
A: Definitely, lack of listening skills generates conflicts within the team because members would be suspicious of each other. In our group, you realize that we experience a number of conflicts because we fail to listen to the views of each other.
Q: How would you employ listening skills to solve conflicts in your group?
A: Actually, listening skills is the only solution to the problems affecting our group. For instance, we need to learn take-turning skills whereby members should learn to give each other time to talk.
An interview with Tom was even more interesting. This is how it ended:
Q: What is your view regarding the importance of listening
A: Listening is all about understanding other people and trying to interpret things from their perspective.
Q: Is listening important in a group meeting
A: Yes, listening is very important in a group because it facilitates understanding and teamwork. People would try to achieve a single objective if they understand each other. This understanding is brought about by listening.
Q: Does ineffective listening lead to conflicts in the group
A: Listening leads to the emergence of conflicts because poor listening may lead a team member to implement a policy in a wrong way. An individual can only perform well if he implements a policy known to him.
Q: How would you employ listening skills to solve conflicts in your group?
A: In a group, listening skills can be applied productively to realize string results. For instance, it only calls for patience and tolerance to understand an individual. An individual might be arguing out an idea, but we are forced to interrupt him or her even before he or she finishes. This results to conflicts.
Analysis and Reflection
The interviews were successful because the two respondents were supportive. Tom and Charles appreciated the fact that listening plays an important role in the group. They noted that listening helps a group member to acquire adequate information, which would be significant in the process of decision making. Listening allows an individual to acquire facts that would help him or her make wise decisions in the group.
For Charles, listening allows an individual in the group to acquire facts that would help him or her make wise decisions. He gave an example by claiming that our group was unable to arrive at a conclusion because members were unwilling to listen to each other. He further observed that if all of us pay attention to what others say, we might discover the attitudes of others regarding the context. Asked whether inadequate listening skills would cause conflicts in the group,the respondents agreed that listening skills helps members of the group in developing trust towards each other.
Therefore, lack of listening skills would definitely generate conflicts in the group, as well as in the organization. If members of a group trust each other, they can easily accomplish group goals. Failure to pay attention to the views of other group members may lead to the failure of the project. Listening helps a group or a team to maintain an excellent reputation.
List of References
Bass, B & Bass, R 2008, The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications, Simon & Schuster, New York.
Cocksedge, S & Carl, M 2005, “The Listening Loop: a model of choice about clues within primary care consultations”, Medical Education, Vol. 39, no. 10, pp 999-1010.
Coghlan, D & Jacobs, C 2004, “The Role of Listening in Organizational Learning,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2005, Vol. 41, no. 1, 428-448.
Lang, M & Floyd, B 2004, “Clues to Patients’ Explanations and Concerns About Their Illnesses – A Call for Active Listening,” Forrest, Archives of Family Medicine, Vol. 9, no 3, pp 222-227.
Northouse, G 2007, Leadership theory and Practice, Thousand Oak, London.