In today's world, being a good communicator is the only way to succeed both economically and personally. To date there are scores of different ways people can communicate with each other using new and old technologies. Modern developments have made communication more simplistic then ever imagined and have become a primary source of information worldwide. However, even with all of these new and exciting technologies, the message being sent still originates in the mind of the creator. Unfortunately, there is no technology that can improve our interpersonal communication skills; therefore we must learn to interact properly on our own in order to become a more competent communicator. Personally, I would like to improve upon two fields of my communicative effort that I feel are hindering my ascension to a more respectable level of proficiency. I hope to develop my listening and perception skills in order to achieve a higher level of aptitude in my communicative efforts.
Listening is a fundamental aspect of daily communication that most of us take for granted because it takes no effort to hear what someone is communicating to you, but the problem lies therein. Hearing is a biological process that occurs naturally and involuntarily in all auditory beings, it is a mere instrument of the human communicative effort. Listening, on the other hand, is a skill that is taught to us, it is the process of perceiving and constructing meaning from spoken or non-verbal messages. .
There are four major stages in the listening process: attendance, interpretation, response, and recollection. These stages serve as a guideline to the fundamentals of being a good listener. The attendance stage involves the decision to commit both mental and physical energy to the process. We give meaning and value to the sounds or stimuli that we hear in the interpretation stage of listening. The response stage includes our discernable reactions involving both verbal and non-verbal feedback.