Barriers to Effective Listening

Just in case you don't go follow the link from my introduction, here is a bit more info to help convince you:

As a process facilitator, one's responsibility is to remove obstacles. This is a list of obstacles to communication and includes for each barrier a strategy to overcome the barrier. Therefore, anyone who is a process facilitator (agile coach, scrummaster, etc.) should look this over and incorporate it into their skill set.

Here is the list of the eight barriers to effective listening:

• Knowing the Answer
• Trying to be Helpful
• Treating Discussion as Competition
• Trying to Influence or Impress
• Reacting to Red Flag Words
• Believing in Language
• Mixing up the Forest and the Trees
• Over-Splitting or Over-Lumping

Mr. Webb ends his article with a very nice self-referential comment:

We can make a difference in the world by learning to listen better and by telling others about better listening. But only if they listen.

Update 20070911:

Interestingly, I believe there are two more barriers to effective listening:

1. Distraction! I know that I have a hard time listening if I am tired, if I am worried about something, if I have sensory overload from another source, or (to my embarrassment) even if I just have my email open while talking on the phone.

2. Poor communication tools! It is much easier to listen effectively if I am face-to-face with the other person. Any type of technology that is used to communicate between two people becomes a barrier to effective listening: email, telephone, chat, etc.

Here is an interesting online quiz/presentation about the barriers to effective listening. In this presentation, there are seven barriers to effective listening listed:

• Content of the message
• Appeal of the speaker
• External distractions
• Emotions
• Clarity of language
• Selective perception
• Inappropriate feedback