The Art of Listening and Communication Flashcards
Active Listening
The level of listening that requires our highest degree of involvement; listening to help others by using verbal and nonverbal responses to express empathy for the speaker; listening for feelings and emotions.
Ambushers
Ineffective listeners who cannot wait to jump into the conversation to disagree with the speaker.
Amiable
A communication style characterized by friendliness, cooperation, and patience.
Analytic
A communication style characterized by seriousness, logic, and precision.
Body Language
Nonverbal body actions such as gestures, body movements, facial expressions, eye behavior, and posture.
Bypassing
A communication error that occurs when people interpret words or phrases differently.
Closed Questions
Questions that invite precise, brief answers, usually in the form of “Yes” or “No,” such as “Have you been to this destination before?”
Connotative
Meaning that is subjective and emotional, like the definitions that exist in the perceptions of our listeners.
Defensive Listeners
Ineffective listeners who take practically everything someone else says as a personal attack.
Denotative
Meaning that is objective and abstract, like the definitions that exist in the dictionary.
Driver
A communication style characterized by independence, efficiency, and decisiveness.
Empathy
The ability to imagine another person’s point of view, to project yourself into another person’s situation in an effort to understand his or her thoughts and feelings.
Evaluating
The third stage in the listening process, in which we weigh the content of the message, sort fact from opinion, and render a judgment of the value of the message.
Expressive
A communication style characterized by enthusiasm, humor, and liveliness.
Feedback
All the verbal and nonverbal messages that we send out in response to our partners’ communication; any message, intentional or unintentional, sent by the listener to the speaker.
Hearing
A purely physical phenomenon in which sound waves are received by the eardrum.
Insensitive Listeners
Ineffective listeners who take everything they hear literally and ignore the tone of voice used by the speaker.
Insulated Listeners
Ineffective listeners who hear only those messages that are pleasant, while blocking out messages that are negative or unpleasant.
Interpersonal Communication
The exchange of messages and meaning between two people.
Interpreting
The second stage in the listening process, in which we assign meaning and importance to the sounds that we hear.
Intimate Distance
A speaker-to-receiver zone from 0 to 18 inches that is typically reserved for those whom we know well.
Jargon
Specialized terminology used by people who share a similar profession, such as travel.
Listening
A deliberate, mental process in which the physical messages are interpreted and understood by the person who receives them; psychological process in which meaning is assigned to what is heard.
Netiquette
Rules governing the proper, professional, and polite way to communicate with people online.
Nonverbal Communication
All the kinds of human responses not expressed in words.
Open Questions
Questions that encourage people to talk, such as “What did you have in mind?” or “How have you enjoyed traveling in the past?”
Paraphrasing
Restating for the speaker what you believe is the essence of what has just been said; to reword the meaning of what was said.
Perception
The way in which objective data are interpreted by individuals.
Personal Distance
A speaker-to-receiver zone of 18 inches to 4 feet that represents the most common distance for communication in the workplace.
Public Distance
A speaker-to-receiver zone of 12 feet to limit of sight that is appropriate for public speaking situations.
Responding
The fourth stage in the listening process, in which we take action as a result of the message.
Selective Listeners
Ineffective listeners who hear remarks only of obvious interest to them and filter out those messages that are not of instant relevance.
Selective Perception
The process of seeing what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear.
Sensing
The first stage in the listening process, which occurs when sound waves reach our ears and we become aware that someone is trying to communicate with us.
Social Distance
A speaker-to-receiver zone of 4 to 12 feet that is usually used for impersonal message exchange.
Uptalking
Occurs when we end our sentences in a higher pitch, as if we are asking a question.
Verbal Communication
Human responses expressed in words.
Verbal Disrupter
Words or phrases tacked on to the end of statements that disrupt the flow from one thought to the next.
Verbalized Pause
Occurs when you fill the natural pauses in your speech patterns with sound.
