Barriers to Effective Listening

There are various obstacles to effectiveness in listening. According to Nichols & Stevens (1957) barriers to listening to consist of:

1. Busy with Yourself

Perhaps the most serious obstacle and most destructive of effective listening is a human tendency to become preoccupied with yourself. For example, people may focus on its practices themselves during the interaction. Sometimes busy with yourself arise because people assume the role as a speaker. Humans began to prepare responses and think about what will be said to answer the questions of his interlocutor. Over time focusing on yourself this, would not pay attention to what the speaker said.

2. Busy with External Issues

Another inhibitor is the tendency to focus on issues that are not relevant to the interaction. Humans think about what was done last Saturday, making plans for tonight or thinking about films that will be witnessed this evening. Of course, more and more busy people thinking about these external matters, increasingly ineffective listening activities.

3. Sharpen (Sharpening)

In sharpening, one or two aspects and the message highlighted, emphasized, and perhaps spiced. Often the concept is refined certain things that happen to stand out compared with the other aspects.

4. Assimilation

Assimilation is the tendency to reconstruct the message so that it is in accordance with the attitudes, prejudices, needs, and the man himself. For example, if a person has negative views of the management company. He received messages that are neutral. For example, a company bulletin says "Management plans to impose a schedule change drastically. Employees should prompt response. "Notice that this statement is not pro or anti-management. Because assimilation may see this as a negative evaluation of the management. In delivering this message to other colleagues, he hinted the negative evaluation of self and say something like, "They will mess up the schedule again." The person who receives this message will not know anything about the first message that is neutral, they only hear negative evaluation: that management will impose a schedule that will be difficult for employees.

5. Comrade Factor-or-Opponent

Factors friend-or-create a human opponent often distorts the message because of his attitude toward others. For example, if you think Freddy is a friend then you will take pains to try to listen objectively Freddy. You have to try hard to hear and evaluate what he says in a fair and unbiased but will be different if Freddy had is your enemy

6. Hearing Expected

When listening, people are often lost in the speaker's message. However, often do not hear what was actually said and instead listen to what is expected. You know that Lin lecturers often protested about the values that have, therefore, when Lin told you about the problem with a teacher, almost automatically you "heard" that Lin was complaining about its value.