In today's fast paced world we could all benefit from being better listeners. It seems most of our communication problems come from misinterpreting information. Some of the bad listening habits we seen to have include fraudulent and monopolistic listening. Also while we are supposed to be listening we sometimes complete, avoid, or attack before all the information has been presented.
For whatever reasons many of us will nod and give the appearance of someone who is taking in the information given, when in fact we are listening at all. Although the fraudulent listeners may be hearing the information he/she is not putting forth the effort to comprehend and remember what it is he/she is hearing. Monopolistic listeners only want you to listen to them. They tend to be obsessed with their own thoughts and ideas and have no interest in anyone else's. An interesting fact from the text states that men in male/female conversations initiated 94% of interruptions. These are two examples of ineffective listening that most people could benefit from improving on.
Some other bad habits we've developed in the area of listening include completing gaps ourselves rather than asking fro the information from the source. This leaves everyone with the impression that all information was received as intended when that may not be the case at all. Avoiders seem to decide not to listen. No effort is given in order to comprehend and they usually do this because content of the information is undesirable to them. In regards to undesirable information, an attacker takes a slightly different approach than an avoider. The attacker will listen but only for a mistake or a point to argue. This is done to diminish the effectiveness of statement that's information is undesirable to the attacker.
As you can see a lot can go wrong while listening. There are many important skills in communication, such as, sending and receiving feedback appropriately, taking all non-verbal communication into consideration, and knowing your audience for instance.