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"If asking good questions can help listening performance, can you provide some examples?”Ĭritical thinking is the act of exercising careful judgment in forming opinions or conclusions. "When you say a draft is due on 15 April, is that before or after the internal coordination process?" or "How does the situation change if you’re married to another military member?" Paraphrase the speaker in your own words:."You said we need toner, copy paper and a three-hole punch. Repeat exact content back to the speaker:.Here are some examples of appropriate questions or responses: Remember that you are trying to absorb as much information as possible and you are less focused on making value judgments on the material. Good informative questions help you clarify and confirm you understand the message. Use this extra time to mentally repeat, forecast, summarize and paraphrase the speaker’s remarks. The average speaking rate is 180 words per minute while most listeners can process 500 words per minute. Exploit time gap between thinking and speaking speeds.Note that if the listener and speaker are in a less formal, emotionally-charged situation, note taking might be misconstrued as hostile behavior (i.e., being put "on the record," or being documented for future adverse action) so use your judgment on whether it is appropriate to the situation. This classic technique is used in situations where you are trying to capture objective information, such as in classes, staff meetings, etc. By taking this approach, we have the mental fortitude to focus longer, ask questions when we don’t understand and think more deeply on a topic.įocus on main points and don’t attempt to capture everything. Typically we expend more effort to understand a subject when we know that we have to teach it to someone else.
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Many education and training specialists suggest this technique. If your primary goal is to understand the message, set aside your preconceptions about the topic and just listen. Improving informative listening: There are several steps you can take to improve your informative listening skills. If you’re receiving formal training that will be followed by a test, your primary goal should be to understand the material, not to evaluate whether the material should be taught at this level. Informative listening is important when receiving information from an established authority or receiving information that is not open for debate.įor example, if you’re receiving a briefing on changes to the assignment system, your goal should be to understand exactly what the rules are, not to sort out the reasons why you think the rules are off track. A successful listening outcome occurs when the listener understands the message exactly as the sender intended. In informative listening, the listener’s primary concern is to understand information exactly as transmitted.
#Effective listening army regulation how to#
Keep reading to uncover how to match listening categories to particular acts of communication. For example, using an informative listening approach (taking notes, asking focused questions) in an empathic listening situation (an angry spouse who feels you’re neglecting the family) could cause the communicative act to fail. Using an incorrect listening category for a certain listening situation may be problematic.
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Second, they can be used to describe listening approaches-the behaviors we use in a given situation and how we are listening. First, they can be used to characterize listening situations-that is, why we should be listening in this situation.
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Informative, Critical and Empathic listening categories can be used in two different ways.
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