Are you a good listener, a really good listener—one who understands exactly what someone else is saying to you? Most of us tend to think that we are much better than we really are when it comes to this important skill. After all, we’ve been listening to others our whole lives. And, with that much practice, we must certainly be okay. To gain some insight into your own listening skills, try the following group exercise.

Questions for Discussion

 1. What did this exercise teach you about your own skills as a listener? Are you as good as you thought? Do you think you can improve?
2. Was there general agreement or disagreement about each listener’s strengths and weaknesses? Explain.
3. After the discussion about the first listener’s effectiveness, you might expect the second listener to do a better job. Was this the case in your own group or throughout the class?
4. Which particular listening skills were easiest and most difficult to put into practice? Are there certain conditions under which good listening skills may be difficult to implement?
5. Do you think you will learn something from this exercise that will help you to improve your listening skills in other situations? If so, what? If not, why no

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Directions 1. Divide the class into pairs of people who do not already know each other. Arrange the chairs so that the people within each pair are facing each other, but separated from the other pairs. 2. Within each pair, select one person as the speaker and the other as the listener. The speaker should tell the listener about a specific incident on the job in which he or she was somehow harmed (e.g., disappointed by not getting a raise, being embarrassed by another, losing a battle with a coworker, getting fired, etc.), and how he or she felt about it. The total discussion should last about 10-15 minutes. 3. Listeners should carefully attempt to follow the suggestions for good listening described on pages 351-352. To help, the instructor should discuss these with the class. 4. After the conversations are over, review the suggestions with your partner. Discuss which ones the listener followed and which ones were ignored. Try to be as open and honest as possible about assessing your own and the other's strengths and weaknesses. Speakers should consider the extent to which they felt the listeners were really paying attention to them. 5. Repeat steps 2 through 4, but change roles. Speakers now are listeners, and listeners now are speakers. 6. As a class, share your experiences as speakers and listeners.