Prompt #3: Dysfunctional listening

Journal Prompt #3

1.    Identify a recent situation when your listening suffered. Apply the listening model to examine the nature of the problem that affected your listening.

     When I first started volunteering at a pharmacy, I really enjoyed it but there was one incident I remember clearly in which I wish I could have improved my listening skills.  It was the day after I had first had my orientation session, so I was excited but also a bit nervous of what to expect.  During my volunteer shift, the phone call line suddenly got extremely busy, and before I knew it, there were phone calls coming in every other minute. Although I felt quite overwhelmed, I tried to answer them as best as I could.  Unfortunately I apparently was more nervous than I realized because while trying to write down an in-store customer's name and birth-date, I messed up the on-call customer's name and prescription number and had to call him back to have him repeat it for me.  Thus I was probably undergoing message overload in which I was trying to listen to too many forms of communication at once and became overwhelmed and thus unable to accurately process both messages.  In addition, the background music in the store, the chatting of the in-store customers, and other distracting noises did not help much with my ability to hear the phone calls. I ended up having to ask customers to repeat their names several times before I was able to correctly write down their names and requested refill prescriptions.  Overall I was facing many external obstacles (message complexity because I was unfamiliar with the drug prescriptions, message overload because so many people called in at once, and noise because the background music and chatter) as well as internal obstacles (preoccupied by my own nervousness), and so needless to say I did not have a fantastic first day there.  I was very worried that the pharmacist would not let me back to volunteer, but luckily, she had a lot of patience and understood the difficulties of the situation I was in then. So I have been able to still go back and volunteer since then!

    In addition a friend of mine sent me this story below and I found it to be very interesting because I was able to analyze it in terms of the listening model, especially in terms of how well the father listens to his son (he frequently resorts to prejudgment) and how he benefits from his own reevaluation of his listening skills when he goes to truly listen to his son for the second time.  
   SON: "Daddy, may I ask you a question?"
DAD: "Yeah sure, what is it?"
SON: "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?"
SON: "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "If you must know, I make $100 an hour."
SON: "Oh! (With his head down).
SON: "Daddy, may I please borrow $50?"
The father was furious.
DAD: "If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I work hard everyday for such this childish behavior."

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.
The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy's questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?
After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think:
Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $ 50 and he really didn't ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy's room and opened the door.

DAD: "Are you asleep, son?"

SON: "No daddy, I'm awake".
DAD: "I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier. It's been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here's the $50 you asked for."

The little boy sat straight up, smiling.
SON: "Oh, thank you daddy!"
Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills. The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

DAD: "Why do you want more money if you already have some?"

SON: "Because I didn't have enough, but now I do.

"Daddy, I have $100 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you."
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness. It's just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. 

   

   Thus this story really shows how the father's prejudgment clouded his ability to truly listen to his son's request.  Because he felt that he already knew what his son was going to say when he asked for the money, he just cut him off without first fully listening to his son's request.  In addition, because the father works so hard for his money, "money," "how much he makes in an hour," and "toys and gifts" are probably some trigger words/phrases that are emotionally loaded for the father.  These phrases may summon up negative feelings and images for the father because he wants to provide for family and give his children money for toys, but is be unable to due to his low salary.  In the situation though, the father was wise in reevaluating his emotional reaction to become a mindful listener. His experience can show us that even if we do not listen well the first time, if we are willing to open up we can still become a better, more mindful listener the second time.

Chap 6: Listening- the lost art of this century

    I really enjoyed the "telephone" experiment we did in class for this chapter! Not only was the story itself quite amusing (as well as the ensuing confusion over whether or not the girl or guy fell into the water or if both did so), but having it retold by multiple people passing on the story to each other really showed how stories can literally get paraphrased, shortened greatly, and even morphed to tell a different tale. It all just depends on how one listens to the story from the speaker, interprets it, and expresses it to the next person they see.  It is akin to being "lost in translation" but by "translation" we don't mean different languages necessarily, but rather different interpretations that individuals have about what they hear based on their own background they bring to the table, as well as how closely they really listen to what the speaker is saying.  Through this experience and my own aversion for creating misunderstandings, I have decided to reflect on my own listening skills and take everything with a bit of a grain of salt- rather than trusting everything my friends tell me or everything in the news reports, I should really question the situation, and seek to actively listen to the speaker in order to understand all the details and the full meaning of what they are trying to convey.  The biggest misconception that society tells us about listening is that is a passive activity. But clearly, as our classroom activity and the discussions in the textbook show, it is anything but passive. If you want to learn how to listen well, you need to commit considerable time and energy in order to become truly skilled at the active process of listening.  

   In terms of social relationships, I feel that listening better will really benefit not only my relationships with my close friends, but also with other peers, coworkers, residents, and more.  Truthfully speaking, I'd say that listening is one of the lost arts of the century- especially in this decade when there are so many ways people can be distracted, so much that people have to do, and so many issues running through peoples' minds every second of the day.  Some people, like many businessmen and women in New York, are used to living their life in the fast lane, always fast-walking from here to there, earphone in ear, blackberry in one hand, coffee in the other, always working on the go.  As a college student I feel a bit like that too- there's always more stuff I should or could be doing.  If I'm not doing homework, then shouldn't I be applying for an internship, or a scholarship, or improving my own lifestyle to include more fitness and healthy eating, or learning a new language? There is just always too much stuff on my to-do list! But in comparison to all these activities that we generally consider as active, we don't put as much value into taking the time to listen carefully to others because we don't regard it as an active process.  I feel like we have this misconception that it's an easy passive activity because we ourselves aren't doing anything obvious with our bodies.  However, we actually are- although it is mainly in our brains where we must actively pay attention and process what the speaker is saying.  But because it's mistakenly viewed as such a passive activity, we tend to think we can "multitask" while listening to others (ex: knitting, typing, checking facebook, checking texts, looking outside, and more are all activities people commonly do when they "listen" to others talk) and still retain much of the information that the speaker is saying.  This type of listening is actually known as "pseudolistening" and is one of the many forms of nonlistening. Thus to improve my own listening skills and avoid falling into the traps of nonlistening, I hope to first correct my misconception of listening as simply a "passive" process.  By recognizing it as an active process I plan to use the tips given in the book and in class (from adapting your listening to the speaker's style and purpose of talking, to organizing what is being said to you into meaningful categories) to hopefully slowly practice becoming a better listener to the people around me. 
    I also really liked the book's use of the traditional Chinese character for "to listen/ listening" (pg 144) to describe all the aspects that encompass effective listening because each smaller component within the larger character stands for something that is essential to listening (聽 Tīng (to listen) = 心 Xīn (heart) + 耳ěr (ears) +目mù (eyes)).  This is one way that written language really reflects the true nature of listening and all that it encompasses.