Active Listening - Essay

It sounds simple. All you have to do is pay attention to the words that another person is saying to be an active listener. But active listening is more than paying attention and there are some barriers that sometimes have to be overcome to listen effectively. So as my colleague Avanthi explained now I’m going to highlight the various kinds of barriers confronted in listening actively. Active listening barriers mainly comprises of the seven major communication barriers namely physical barriers, emotional barriers, language barriers, perceptual barriers, cultural gender and interpersonal barriers. In addition active listening barriers are two folds as internal and external barriers. Now let’s talk about internal barriers to active listening. This mainly refers to intrapersonal barriers in practising active listening. Emotion or emotional noise is the state of feeling experienced by the listener which reduces the focussing ability. For an example Boredom, boredom is where the listener stops giving his full attention to what is being said by the speaker. Prejudgment and criticism along with biasness toward the speaker all play a hand in creating barriers to listening actively. Filters or selective perception is also another major internal barrier.
Being overloaded with information where one experiences too much stimulation or information can make it very difficult to listen with full attention.
Moving on to the next slide lack of common experiences, note-Taking attempts, jumping to conclusions, assumptions, intention, lack of Empathy and fear all contributes as internal barriers by inhabiting attempts to listening actively.
Now let’s move on to the external barriers
Distractive noises such as disturbances in the communication channel due to technicality as well as disturbing hand movements by the speaker acts as barriers to active listening. Additionally clarity of language used (E.g. ambiguity of words, jargons) along with inappropriate statements by the