10 Poor Listening Styles to Avoid

When we talk about communication, we mostly focus on speaking, writing, and reading. Listening is seldom emphasized as a primary form of communication, even though listening enables us to satisfy an individual’s deep psychological needs – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, and to be appreciated (Covey, 2020). We mostly listen not to understand but to prepare response, judge, or interpret information through our own motives and frame of reference. These poor listening styles can be subsumed under these 10 categories (Covey 2014, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019):

1. Spacing out or ignoring is when you zone out because you are too preoccupied with your own thoughts. This does happen to all of us, but you don’t want to be labelled as a spacey person if this keeps happening to you. 

2. Pretend or removed listening is where you may be multitasking and give the speaker the impression that you are paying attention using fillers like “yeah,” uh-huh,” “right,” “cool” or throwing in “lol” or an emoji when texting. This can be perceived as insulting to the speaker.

3. Mimicking is repeating what a person is saying and is often taught as a skill of “active” listening. However, parroting what a person has just told you doesn’t help you empathize with the feelings behind the spoken words.

4. Selective listening is when you pay attention to one part of the conversation that interests you or has been on your mind recently. For example, your friend tells you that they bought a new car and you respond, “Yeah, I was just thinking about the weird sound my car has been making.”

5. Word listening involves you paying attention to the actual words but ignoring other cues such as the tone, the body language, the feelings, or the context. For example, a simple question like, “What do you think about this?” to get your opinion on something can be interpreted by you differently based on non-verbal cues.

6. Self-centered listening is when you listen from your point of view. This results in you evaluating – agreeing or disagreeing; probing – asking more questions from your own frame of reference; or judging – trying to figure people out or explain their motives. We all tend to default to a self-centered listening style because we have modelled our communication on “Oh, I know exactly how you feel” or “When I was your age…” or “I told you so” speeches handed down to us over the years.

7. Competitive listening in everyday language is a game of one-upmanship. For example, “You think you had a rough day. Wait until I tell you what happened to me.” You may also try to compete with another individual by listening only to identify errors in reasoning or logic, which you know would be difficult to defend by the other person.

8. Problem-solving listening is a common listening style where you are mostly listening to give advice based on your own experiences. Men tend to default to problem-focused coping (as opposed to emotion-focused coping in women) which makes them more prone to this style of listening. Some people instead of giving a concrete solution may use phrases like, “Try harder” or “Think positively.” And when the speaker feels frustrated because they were mostly seeking to have their emotions validated rather than being advised, the problem-solving listener, still unable to empathize, usually responds by saying something like, “Oh, come on, I was only trying to help.” Although the advice is well-intentioned, the speaker is not seeking that.

9. Conflict-avoiding listening involves anticipating a difficult conversation or fear of conflict which results in a person avoiding disagreeing, or expressing themselves, or they are trying to appease the speaker. Sometimes this type of listening is driven by underlying anxiety or fear wherein you may assume that the conversation will be adversarial. The mental energy that it takes you to avoid conflict prevents you from understanding the speaker at a deeper level.

10. Reactive listening is when no matter what the other person says, you get defensive, take an issue with it, and take things personally. Rather than focusing on the speaker, you are waiting to jump in with a reply that you have already formed in your mind.

Take a moment to reflect on the last conversation you had that didn't go according to plan or ended in a conflict. Next, review the list of these poor listening styles and check if you were using one or more of these. You can also analyze a few more difficult past conversations and see if you are reverting to some of these off-putting listening styles. The key here is to replace these poor listening styles with empathic listening. This involves going beyond projecting your own thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives and listening to understand the reality in one’s head and heart (Covey, 2020).

To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that promote mental health and well-being, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Covey, S. (2014). The 7 habits of highly effective teens. NY, New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Covey, S. R. (2020). The 7 habits of highly effective people. NY, New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Harvard Business Review Press (2019). Mindful listening. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.