June 29, 2014

          In order to study the impact listening has on interpersonal communication, I decided to have a conversation with my barber about the National Basketball Association. I sat in the barber chair and assumed an upright stance, turned off my phone, and made eye contact with my barber when she observed my hair from the front. By doing those things, I put myself in a position to ignore competing stimuli and miscellaneous thoughts so I could stay tuned in to what my barber was going to say. Furthermore, I consciously prepared myself to put forth the constant and continuous effort to shift completely from speaker to listener throughout the conversation (Verderber & Verderber 204-205).

 As she started to cut my hair I asked her what she thought was going to happen in free agency this summer, considering that the NBA season had just come to an end. I actively listened, “the skillful, intentional, deliberate, conscious process of attending to, understanding, remembering, critically evaluating, and responding to messages that we hear,” to her opinions about different players and which teams they would sign with (Verderber & Verderber 201).

 Active listening allowed me to hear small details in her messages that I may have missed in a normal and passive conversation. One of those details was how she didn’t like certain players and even despised quite a few. Instead of making the assumption that she was a hateful person I kindly asked her to elaborate so I could evaluate why she felt the way she did. This was an example of my content-oriented listening style, which is “the personal listening style that prefers to focus on the facts and evidence in a message” (Verderber & Verderber 199). I appreciate detail, enjoy the challenge of listening to complex messages, and ask questions to get more information that I can think about (Verderber & Verderber 199). This listening style allowed me to discover that my barber disliked certain basketball players because they only cared about money instead of the sport, which she found incredibly selfish. She felt it was a shame that they publicly sought more money when they’re already paid millions of dollars each year for dribbling a ball, all while a good majority of the country is in poverty. I found that her reasoning was logical, which I respected, and actually agreed with to a high degree. My new understanding, “accurately decoding a message so you comprehend the semantic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic meaning of a message,” of her opinions wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t make the effort to carefully listen (Verderber & Verderber 205). Listening prevented confusion in interpreting messages, and any unnecessary tension, from arising during the conversation. Our conversation had greater depth because I truly understood where my barber was coming from and why she felt the way she did, which led to a meaningful interaction.

Works Cited

Verderber, Kathleen S. & Rudolph F. Verderber. Inter-Act: Interpersonal Communication             Concepts, Skills, and Contexts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.