5.2 Barriers to Effective Listening

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Discuss some of the environmental and physical barriers to effective listening.
2. Explain how cognitive and personal factors can present barriers to effective listening.
3. Discuss common bad listening practices.

Barriers to effective listening are present at every stage of the listening process. Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 200. At the receiving stage, noise can block or distort incoming stimuli. At the interpreting stage, complex or abstract information may be difficult to relate to previous experiences, making it difficult to reach understanding. At the recalling stage, natural limits to our memory and challenges to concentration can interfere with remembering. At the evaluating stage, personal biases and prejudices can lead us to block people out or assume we know what they are going to say. At the responding stage, a lack of paraphrasing and questioning skills can lead to misunderstanding. In the following section, we will explore how environmental and physical factors, cognitive and personal factors, and bad listening practices present barriers to effective listening.