- Accepting the challenge to get something of worth out of every situation
- Good listeners may find the subject boring, but they accept the challenge and make the most of the situation by focusing on the speaker’s message, and try to derive something from the encounter
- Focus on what is being said rather than how it is being said
- Effective listeners simply ignore a speaker’s poor delivery or annoying mannerisms and focus on what is being said
- Waiting for the entire presentation before beginning evaluation
- Effective listeners do not jump to conclusions about what is being said, instead wait for the presentation to conclude before beginning their overall evaluation
- Focusing exclusively on the main ideas
- Good listeners look for the main ideas. Once the overall ideas of the talk are understood, the facts can be remembered as logical components
- Limiting their note taking
- Good listeners sit back and listen before picking up a
- Listening actively
- Listening requires energy and attention. The good listener not only hears effectively but also observes the nonverbal signs of the speaker
- Avoiding distractions or at least controlling them
- Effective listeners try to control their environment by screening out distractions.
- Listening to challenging material
- The good listener occasionally seeks out the difficult subjects to challenge his/her listening skills
- Filtering out emotion-laden words to challenging material
- Effective listeners examine those words and phrases that have an emotional effect on them, and being aware of this problem helps them to overcome the listening barrier
- Spending extra time on thoughts related to the material being heard
- Effective listeners spend their extra thoughts on materials related to the talk to fill in the extra time between speech speed and thought speed.