BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

3. Arms crossed, legs crossed,
4. Gestures made with exasperation,
5. Slouching, hunching over,
6. Poor personal care,
7. Doodling,
8. Staring at people or avoiding eye contact,
9. Excessive fidgeting with materials.
b. Barrier of communication on the receiver’s level
Listening is difficult. A typical speaker says about 125 words per
minute. The typical listener can receive 400-600 words per minute. Thus,
about 75 percent of listening time is free time. The free time often
sidetracks the listener. Letting your attention drift away you put
deliberately a barrier in commutation.
Others impediments of communication related to poor listening
skills are:
- Automating listening.
- Selective listening.
Automatic listening happens when a person listening just long
enough to find a word that he knows something about. Then shut off the
rest of what is being said, particularly the emotional content. Then starts
talking about the word he knows something about. This blocks real
communications by not hearing the total content. This is the most used
form of blocking true communication.
Selective listening is when a person hears another but selects to
not hear what is being said by choice or desire to hear some other message.
This can take several forms and result in acting out in destructive ways.
An example is to become passive aggressive by pretending to hear and
agree to what was said when actually your intent is to NOT act on the
message, but make the other person think you will. Another form is to act
on what you wanted to hear instead of what was said. Continued selective
listening is one of the best ways to destroy a relationship.
c. Barriers on the channel’s level
In order to avoid misunderstanding, in choice of a channel, the
sender needs to be sensitive to such things as the complexity of the
message (good morning versus a construction contract); the consequences
of a misunderstanding (medication for a sick animal versus a guess about
tomorrow's weather); knowledge, skills and abilities of the receiver (a new
employee versus a partner in the business); and immediacy of action to be
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