There are many types of listening that can change your life and work. In this article, we describe 7 different types of listening that can affect the way you communicate with other people. All the types of listening skills are equally important and you should apply them all in your communications.
Discriminative listening
Discriminative listening is the first type of listening skill that we are born with. We can further develop this skill, but it is an essential method to make a difference in someone’s voice or mood when they are speaking.
A baby is born with this skill, and a baby can respond to your words with a smile if you talk to them with a soft and loving voice. At the same time, you can use this skill even if you do not understand the words, and this is possible if you hear someone’s tone of voice and the overall intention of the talk.
Informational listening
You can use informational listening when you want to learn something new. If you want to become a good listener, you should develop informational listening skills and maintain a high level of this skill in everyday life.
You usually need a high level of concentration to perform this skill and this applies when you want to understand a new concept or a new idea. This skill is best used in coaching, or when you listen to an educational ebook. It is also used in work training or when you want to expand your knowledge in some area of your interest at home or work.
It’s time to go deeper into sounds for better communication.
Comprehensive listening
If you compare discriminative listening where you do not have to know the meaning of the words, with comprehensive listening, you need to understand the words that you are listening to. For example, if your boss wants to give you feedback or convey a message, you need to know the meaning of the words to understand the message.
Biased listening
Biased listening is also known as selective listening. In this kind of listening, you hear only the things that you want to hear. This kind of listening leads to misunderstanding and the facts are not well understood if you use biased listening.
If your colleague gives you work to do and explains to you what should be done, you may overlook some information and hear only what satisfies your intentions. In this kind of situation, you can hear only the information that is not important for the project. For these reasons, you should avoid biased listening at work.
Empathetic listening
Empathetic listening is putting ourselves in other people’s shoes. If you use empathetic listening, you can fully understand the position of the speaker and you can see the world from their perspective. This kind of listening skill is very important at work and home. You can better understand the information when you put yourself in the position of the speaker.
Sympathetic listening
If you want to build real and strong relationships with people, you need to use sympathetic listening skills. This kind of listening is driven by emotions. While the speaker speaks about something, you can follow their emotions and intentions at the same time. You can imagine how they feel and you can see their perspective from the emotional side.
Critical listening
Critical listening goes deeper than comprehensive listening. In critical listening, you need to see the larger picture and you need to solve the problem from many angles. For example, if you need to resolve an issue at your work, you will need to see all the sides of the problem. If there is an angry customer, you will need critical listening to offer the right solution.
As you can see, there are many types of listening with examples. You should apply all of the methods in order to be successful at work and home.