The Social State of Man
This is the aspect
of man that describes his relationship with people. Hargie (1997:10), citing
Combs and Slaby, defines social skill as ‘the ability to interact with others
in a given social context in specific ways that are socially acceptable or
valued and at the same time personally beneficial mutually beneficial or
beneficial primarily to others’.
The
Professional/Vocational Aspect of Man
This is
usually an offshoot of all the other sides of man as they affect his job or
career. The professional state of man has to do with his competence and
performance at work. In other words, this can be described by his competence
and performance in relation to his job or tasks.
Having thus
established the foregoing, let us now go on to consider how the four
communication skills can be used to enhance these aspects of man to attain a
maximized life style.
Listening
for Personal Development
The
International Listening Association, cited by Hybels and Weaver (2001:64),
defines listening as “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and
responding to spoken and/or non-verbal messages”. Listening goes beyond being
an important communication skill, it is a way of life. Most of our conscious
and unconscious communication efforts are geared toward listening. A research reveals
that listening takes 53% of our communication activities, reading 17%, while
speaking and writing constitute 16% and 14% respectively (Hybels and Weaver,
2001:70).
However, this
statistics notwithstanding, it is rather pathetic that most people have a poor
listening habit. They listen without really listening. Lamenting on this
anomaly, Benson (undated:155) says:
The
art of listening is an essential but oft overlooked element of good
communication. Genuine listening has become one of the endangered species. God
gave each of us two ears and one mouth – perhaps he intended that we use them
proportionally.
The tendency common to most people is to
egospeak, a term which communication experts coined to describe people’s desire
to listen to themselves more than anyone else:
Egospeak
is thinking of what you’re going to say next while another person is trying to
talk to you. Jumping in before, or on,
the other person’s last word. Constantly trying to top the other person’s story
(Benson, undated:155).
In similar
vein, Beck et al (2002:12) distinguish between hearing (which is what most
people really do) and listening. They note that:
It is useful
to make a distinction between hearing and listening. Most people can hear, in that they can
receive and distinguish sound within a specific frequency range. Hearing,
however, is a passive activity. It is something that happens to us, rather than
something that we do. On the other hand,
listening is active… ‘People hear but do not listen’. In a class or lecture it
is very likely you will hear the words being spoken. You may not necessarily
listen to them.
With this
background on listening, let us now proceed to see how it can be utilized for
personal development at different levels.
Listening
for Mental and Emotional Development
A good
listening habit is one of the indications of good breeding. Since the mental
faculty, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the body can only retain and
process the message or information inputted into it - as well as be enriched by
it – it behoves every individual to cultivate a good listening habit by:
§ Paying
attention and showing interest in the message being transmitted
§ Indicate
to the speaker if he is understanding the message or not, and
§ Showing
how he is reacting to the message by non-verbal cues (Beck et al, 2002).
The first way
to use the listening skill to enhance your mental faculty and ensure a
wholesome being is by being selective about what you listen to. There is no better way to keep your mind
healthy than to choose what you listen to. Knowledge is the food of the soul,
just as the body thrives on viands and adornments. However, it is not all the information that
one is exposed to that he should listen to, for as the saying
goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. What
you feed your brain is what you will express in speech or behaviour.
So, the first
rule for using listening to achieve mental and emotional development is to
choose what you listen to. Platitudes
and other forms of debased communication do nothing good to the soul. They must therefore not be entertained,
otherwise, the mind will process them, deposit them in the mental and emotion
realm, and the man will live them eventually.
Capturing this
phenomenon in another words, Allen (1902:4-5), in his timeless classic, says:
‘Men
themselves are makers of themselves’ by virtue of the thoughts which they
choose and encourage…(The) mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment
of character and the outer garment of circumstance...
As
the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man
springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without
them. This applies equally to those acts called “spontaneous” and
“unpremeditated” as to those which are deliberately executed
Another way to
enhance your mental and emotional capacity through listening is by attending
seminars, lectures, workshops, conferences, and other intellect-simulating
fora. By so doing, you will continually cultivate your mind, widen your horizon,
and school your emotion, which is at best erratic.
