4.0 Introduction to Listening to Others

Defining the Scope of Listening to Others

In listening to the SONG of life, listening to “others” in this chapter means listening to other human beings. While “others” could mean anything other than the listener (e.g., other people, animals, a Divine being), in the context of the SONG, the letter “O” stands for ”Other” humans, typically one other person. Even in group situations, in U.S. academic and business cultures in particular, usually one person speaks while everyone else listens. This cultural dynamic of a single authority figure talking to many others is also prevalent in societies outside of the U.S., for example, many European and Asian school systems adopt this type of communication structure.

Much of the research on listening to others in the human-to-human context is from the Communication and Social Psychology disciplines. Consequently, most of the literature reviewed for “listening to others” is based on these fields. I focus on “best practices” in my review of the listening literature. I also review classic and contemporary texts in the field of Communication, and TED talks on listening. Much of this research is based on face-to-face human communication. Consequently, I focus on best practices for face-to-face live human communication. Until the last few decades, digital communication^[1] research was relatively scarce. However, since digital communication is now part of mainstream society, I briefly consider digital listening issues toward the end of the chapter.

There are vast numbers of topics in interpersonal listening that could be addressed in this chapter.^[2] I intentionally limit the topics covered in this chapter on listening to others based on my experience teaching the listening class for the past decade and on my knowledge and professional opinion of what I believe to be critical listening topics. As a preview, this chapter covers the listening topics of best practices, empathy, digital listening, and an extended description and commentary on the listening stick practice.