Assignment 2- Listening Styles

I took a short quiz in my text book and discovered what type of listening style I have. I found out that I am a people-oriented listener. This really does not surprise me at all. The other options for listening styles were action-oriented, content-oriented, and time-oriented.

Being a people-oriented listener means that during a conversation my main focus is on the person that I am listening to. More specifically, I am interested in my conversation partners feelings and emotions while they are taking to me. When my husband tells me about his bad day, I'm more interested in the emotions that the bad events caused rather than what the actual events of his day are. It is easy and natural for me to 'put myself in someone elses shoes'. I am doing this almost subconsciously  every time I listen to someone else speak. The benefits of this listening style are that it makes it very easy for me to become emotionally close with someone. Because I focus on a very personal aspect of the conversation, it is easy for me to find things to relate to with most people. A downside of this type f listening style is that it is very easy to become too emotionally involved. If someone is telling me something bad or sad that happened to them, it is hard for me to not continue thinking about it when I leave the conversation. This can effect my mood greatly if I let it. I'm not sure I've ever noticed when I'm conversing with someone with a different listening style. If I did pay attention to that, I would probably notice that the other person would seem to be interested in different areas of the conversation than I would be.

According to the book, most women tend to be people-oriented listeners. Once again, this is no surprise. Women tend to be more people-oriented in many scenarios. Men are more action and content oriented. I've seen this is my husbands listening style. If i tell him I had a great time doing something, he wants to know all the details behind what it was that I did.  Our American culture is thought to be less people-oriented than other cultures.  Although I do not fit this, I do see how Americans can tend to be more time, action and content oriented listeners. Us Americans are always in a hurry, so while someone is in  a conversation, they have the mentality of 'hurry up and tell me what you wanna tell me so that I can go do something else'.