The Art of Listening

In listening mood she seemed to stand, The guardian naiad of the strand -Sir Walter Scott Listening is an art.To be well performed, it requires more than just letting sound waves enter passively into ears.Good listening is an alive process demanding alert and active participation.If listening is an art, then it requires knowledge and effort.It is in essence a mental skill that can be developed primarily through training and practice.If we are to learn to know how to listen well, we must proceed as we would in learning any other art such as music, painting, architecture or acting.That is, if we are to become good listeners, we must first attempt to inquire about all the basic essentials of productive listening, and second, we must do a great deal of practicing until we can master its workings.The art of listening is not something we can acquire through "do-it-yourself" shortcuts.It requires constant practicing and thinking.The good listener, as Nichols and Stevens so aptly put it, "listens between the lines.He constantly applies his spare thinking to what is being said."! The good listener, while he is attentive to what is being said, is also aware of the total facts at hand, with both their verbal connotations and their nonverbal implications.First of all, the practice of an art requires discipline.It is essential, according to Fromm, "that discipline should not be practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one's own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practicing it."2In desiring to be good listeners, it is imperative that we "be in the mood" to want to listen and at the same time consider some of its more challenging aspects.We might even set aside certain times of our daily life for serious listening, in contrast to the vast amount of superficial listening that goes on when we chit-chat about the weather, talk about social doings or ramble on during a coffee break.Concentration is a second prerequisite of good listening.So many of us in our Western Culture have difficulty in concentrating.We take a peculiar pride in doing many things at once, such as watching television, reading a book, talking, smoking, eating and drinking.This lack of concentration is also prevalent among us because of our fear of being alone with ourselves.To sit still, to be silent and to concentrate on something specific for any length of time is impossible for most people.They become nervous and fidgety and, to