5 Levels of Listening

Really communicating your thoughts with someone is challenging. You must learn to listen first. Most people confuse listening with hearing. Listening takes concentration. It takes knowing what the person is actually trying to communicate to you. Hearing understands what they are saying through your perception or your filter. Listening understands what they are saying through their perception or their filter. That takes really knowing the other person.

Listening happens in one of five levels-

1. Ignoring

2. Pretending

3. Selective Listening

4. Attentive Listening

5. Empathetic Listening

Ignoring is obviously not listening. The person ignoring you has no interest in what you are saying. Their eye contact and body language will let you know.

Pretending to listen is less obvious. The hearer is actually distracted by something else, like their computer screen or other people, but is acting like they are listening. A classic example is the scene where a husband is at the breakfast table looking at the morning news and his wife is talking. He might make comments to her like, “Yes dear” or “That’s interesting dear”, but he really has no idea what she said.

Selective Listening is listening for what you want to hear. The goal of a selective listener is to hear what they want and ignore the rest of what you are saying. It is self-focused listening.

Attentive Listening is wanting to hear what you are saying, but only focusing on what words you use, not your meaning. Individual’s definition of words can differ. They may miss your actual meaning by only hearing the words.

Empathetic Listening focuses not only on words, but also body language and emotion. The hearer is listening with the intent to understand what you are communicating. It is listening with your ears, your eyes and your heart. It is listening for feeling, meaning and behavior. We cannot truly communicate with others if we aren’t empathetic listeners.

Once you have learned to listen empathetically to the other person, it is then possible for you to communicate what you have to say to them. You will recognize which form of listening they are using, and then you can guide them into the empathetic listening mode.