in this video we are going to begin our discussions on listening we're going to talk about listening skills the difference between hearing and listening and the role that the listener plays in the communication process because listening is the other half of the communication process when we discuss the communication process before we talked about it being a cycle that continues until its end and the cycle often begins with feedback provided by a listener so listening is the other half of the communication process I like to start this off by asking a question what is the difference between listening and hearing what do you see is the difference between listening and hearing well hearing is simple hearing is a physiological process a biological process that involves sound waves bouncing off of our eardrums we hear whether we are aware of it or not I'm sure that if you were to be real silent right now and listen in whatever space you're in watching this video you will hear things maybe the buzzing of a fluorescent light maybe noises outside your door or something like this I'll give you a second to discover that I hear a clock ticking see we hear these things constantly even if we're not aware of it and that in life that is the very beginnings of the difference between hearing and listening we don't even try to hear we do even if we don't know what's going on but listening on the other hand involves paying close attention to and making sense of what we hear when we listen we are decoding the noise we are making a sense of the noise we're paying close attention to it and making a sense of what we hear now in an honest effort to listen human beings grasp only 50% of what they hear meaning if you're doing your very best right now in this video to pay attention to what I'm saying and if you're part of the norm at best you're going to grasp half of it that's the norm does it sound very good but in Western culture that just is seems to be the way that we are and are not enough for effort the listen we grasp 50% of what we hear what's worse is what takes place two days later because two days after that we've only retain 10% of the total message so think about that two days after you have a conversation with someone or sit through someone's class if you didn't take notes you just listen think oh I've got this two days later you're going to read entertain one tenth of that ten percent that's not very good it's the norm but it's not very good that's why you take knows you know if you could read comprehend most of what you hear in a classroom in one setting and retain most of that after a few days you wouldn't have to take notes you take notes to remind yourself of the things that you had forgotten after you know once you leave the lecture once you leave the communication process so there's no wonder why business managers rank listing skills at the very top of their list when it comes to hiring people when you ask a business manager and give them a list of things if listening skill is on that list that's going to be at the very top think about it there's not very many things more stressful than our first day or first week especially in the first day on a job we get hired and we just can't keep up with the pace of learning you know all the things that they're piling on us and we're scared to death that we're going to screw up right away and we're gonna lose our job and that sort of thing because so think about how overwhelming that is and we're done about listening skills when I was a younger the only only other job I ever had prior to teaching at me RTC was that of working at local Pizza Hut here in my town and the last two years of working there I was out of college I was looking for a job teaching and I had yet so I've had moved up into management I was making the big pizza books if you know what I mean so I was in charge of everything I was in charge of the books you know work schedule inventory you know cashing out at the end of each day you know hiring and firing all of this kind of stuff and in that line of work as many of you know turnover is quite rapid people come and go fairly quickly not because it's a bad place of work but it's an entry-level job you can 16 year old kid you know in high school getting a job and within two years or less they're graduating from high school are moving on to another town - to better their life so there's a lot of turnover so here I am I'm the guy that the pizza that's paying the most money there at the pizza high and to do all the books and stuff like that but I'm spending so much of my time dealing with turnover so let's say I need to fill a position I'm gonna spend two days well maybe a half a day or more just going through application forms then I'm going to spend two days you know going going through interviews I'm going to interview potential workers after that I'm going to hire one I'm going to spend a half a day with that person going over policy and showing them videos of what we do at the Pizza Hut sizing them up for uniforms giving them a tour of the place this is our walk-in freezer this is where we make the dough this is where this happens the salad bar and all of this the next day ever to start training them all right I'm not doing books now I'm halfway through the workweek and I'm gonna start training them you know okay this is how you roll out the thin and crispy dough make sure you perforate the dough with that little roller to post the holes in it you know little holes like they have in grandpa's shoes but kind of make them breathe you have to do that with the pizza dough as well and oh use the blue cup for medium pizza fill it up with cheese with a red cup for a large pizza full of cheese the clear cup for a small or whatever it was and you're teaching them all of this put the food you know if it's a large pizza put it at the back of the conveyor and so it cooks longer if it's a small one put it at the front of conveyor oven so it cooks a short period of time so you don't burn it in all of this kind of stuff that's a day event the next day they go to work but you don't leave the bosses over their shoulder I remember what I said it's the red one don't use blue cup here use the red one if you spread that sauce all the way up to the edge you're spending a whole day of that now you're getting toward the end of the week and it's time for you to get back there and get all those books done because Home Office at Wichita Kansas wants you to put that stuff in the mail by you know Wednesday morning at nine o'clock so now I'm behind and the Pizza Hut is paying me overtime while they're paying me overtime I've left this new employee going out there and man it's chaotic out there in the kitchen he or she's sending things out to the wrong table or burning them or there's a bottleneck at the cash register because they're going real slow you have lunch crowds who are backed up and you get back to work they're angry you can lose some of their business for a month or so and you're losing money that way they're paying me overtime why because that poor employee who's trying their best can only grasp at best 50 percent of what I'm trying to teach them at that one given moment and then they forget a lot of that and as soon as they go home and then plus with a new worker the anxiety on top of that makes it even worse so that's the importance of listening you know some cultures do a little better than us they go to school all year round they have classes on listing we don't usually have classes on listening we teach you to read we teach you to write we teach you to add and subtract we teach you to speak but all we ever do is say turn around listen shut up pay attention as if we inherently have that skill unfortunately the most you're ever going to get on listening skill is a small unit in your oral communication course alright so that's the importance of listening that's how crucial it is to develop some listening skills alright so there is a question like I said Wyatt is listening important to you as a public speaker why is listening important to you as a public speaker let me tell you something people spend more time listening than they do with any other communicative activity it's been more time as a listener than you do with any other part of the communication process think about that some people find that a little hard to believe but if you think about it thoroughly it's not that hard to believe even those of us who make a living presenting like a teacher or a politician or something like that still spend more of our day in the role of a listener than we do as a speaker I mean if I'm in a traditional classroom I'm speaking but 50% of the time are 100 percent of the time which is 50% of the communication process I'm responding to feedback that's a less a listening fulfillment I'll I'll go home and listen to the important people in my life talk about their day I'm a news junkie I'll stay glued to the television all set listening to news so listing eats up more of our time than any other one of those seven parts of the communication process that we've previously discussed many experts have determined that good listeners make better speakers and vice-versa the better you get at listening the better you get at speaking and the better get it speaking the better you get at listening now that may sound a lot but it about it you know have you ever set through somebody's lecture and then realize you've picked up on their speech patterns or know somebody real real close and that you have personal conversations with and over time you pick up on their speech patterns and their thought patterns so you can detect the setup and you know where they're going after that same thing that that's what's happening when you're listening and if you and if you realize that you're able to detect patterns then you can apply that to encoding your own messages I was a terrible high school student I was an absolutely pitiful student I you know was it that I couldn't make the grade it's just that I I didn't I was involved in everything but class I was in baseball was in track I was in band I was in the theater I was in a lot of the clubs and the last thing I needed to do was focus on on you know my class works matter of fact I got out of a lot of it because the coaches liked me a little bit and they'd give me out to help drag the infield or you know the theater program the teacher would send a knows hello I need him out here to help work on this set and I took full advantage of that but when I graduated I barely made it I'll be perfectly honest with you because I just made the grade I had to make to get there and I stay focused on the things I enjoyed that I don't guess there's anything wrong with that until I woke up one day halfway through my senior year dirt-poor by the way through a really boring housing project than all of that and I realized I wanted out of that I wanted something better took that late the game but I finally grew and I thought okay I want something and I decided to go to college and somebody showed a little interest in me and my theatrical capability so I said okay let's go that direction I really didn't even know know why it's just that somebody said here I could you know take you by the hand and walk you through this to this degree so I did it when I got the ASU out of the 11,000 something folks that were enrolled I honestly believe I was the most dedicated and most serious student there because I realized my friends were moving on I grew up in poverty I didn't want to have a family that way so I took it seriously the problem was I did not know how to take notes I would get these little spiral bound notebook that had 25 pages in upper corner at the bookstore and I after a week's worth of lecture I would pretty much fill that thing up why because I would write down every word the professor said and the reason I wrote down everything they said was because I didn't know how to take notes I was a lousy student so I never really did that and I took notes and if I ever had to take a test it would be like three of these notebooks full of notes I have one thing going for me I have a freakish memory I can commit things to memory like nobody's business I do all these plays and stuff and I can learn an act in about two or three hours it might take some people a couple weeks to do that I can learn it in two or three hours so as I was writing these notes I got a little behind but I can remember everything the teacher was saying now we get it on there you know how we teachers are well give you all this stuff then we test you over about ten percent of what it was well in my world that was on steroids because if if I were taking notes of my lecture today I would put you know clear cup filled with cheese for small pizza as if that dealt with oral communication I was writing it down committing it to memory and if I ever had two tests on one day man that was the end of the world well last year in August prior to my senior year I got married now I had help and I remember we live in that little apartment I the night before my first test that semester I said to my wife I said go to bed get a good night's sleep I want to get you up real early in the morning and I want you to read through these notes as I recite them to you okay I stayed up all night I'm cramming that stuff to memory and I got up that next morning got her up and I said here you go just read along I drew a breath and I started elaborating her chin hit the floor she said how are you doing this I said it's the only thing I know how to do I said it was a terrible high school student I'm dead serious about college and all I know how to do is you know this I says wear me out but I'm almost there I graduated with my bachelor's with a 2.97 it's not the nothingness to brag about but I'm the groom's family tria warrants the the label of genius you know I have family that will ask me for medical advice because I you know had a 2.97 in theater and all of that kind of stuff you know but I'll take a lot better than what I did in high school got out got a job teaching took me two years of pizza but I still got a good job teaching my first semester I'm talking about good listeners becoming speakers my first semester I was terrible I don't think there's a beginning teacher alive then knocks it out of the park you've seen us or a little sloppy or stuttering or nervous we're getting red face to stuff I could see in your faces I was not doing good second semester I had gotten a little better I realized this just this third semester I was feeling pretty comfortable had a few kinks fourth semester sick into the second year I was hitting my stride I was doing okay all right then I went back to get my masters because we as a vocational technical school decided to move into the college level in order to teach at this level I needed my masters and I went I listened to these professors and in a week's time instead of filling up a 25-page phone bound notebook I was maybe filling seven and a half pages or so by the time we had a test I'm sorry in a week's time I would fill up a page and a half by the time we had a test I might have seven or half to eight pages worth of notes you know what that's like I'm going to bed at the same time my wife is I'm having her read seven eight pages worth of notes and she says how are you doing this I said oh no I said it's just coming naturally and I'll tell you something right now grad school it's killer compared to this stuff you're going through now it was the I felt like was the end of the world but I was acing it and I graduated with my Master's with a 3.75 so I go from this 2.0 high school student to two point nine seven which is right under a three and my bachelor's degree to a 3.75 with my master's degree without taking very many notes at all what happened what in that evolution made me capable of being so much better of a student it was the two years that I taught because as I looked into the faces in those two years I became better at fixing my message the better I got and encoding my lesson plans the better I was at going to ASU and listening to another instructor deliver their lesson plan I wasn't sitting in that class like most the other students just as a student I was a student but I was also a peer I was listening to someone do for a living what I was going to wake up the next morning and do for a living myself I saw their structure I was able to not just decode the message I was able to decipher their outline oh this is just introductory stuff I don't need to mark this down these are the only two or three things I'm gonna learn in today's lesson I'm just gonna put that aside I'm not gonna write that down I'll write these four things down and I'll just listen to what they say if he told the joke or a story I put that by it and that was enough to trigger my memory of the full conversation when we were when I was studying for a test so the better I got it speaking the better I got at listening and the same thing holds true in Reverse so if we become good listeners then we become better critical thinkers I'll say it again good listeners become good critical thinkers now in here when we use the word critical thinking and critical and other words critical listening we're meaning the same thing so critical listening and critical thinking in here will mean one in the same and in the next video I'm going to talk to you about the four basic levels of listening I won't talk about critical listening right away even though I've brought it up because critical listening is the most difficult of the four I will in the next video with it but the better we are at listening the better we are at critical thinking