Ten bad listening styles you DON’T want to have …

One of the best things you can do to show respect and honor to someone is to listen to them.

One of the best things you can do to nurture any kind of relationship is to listen to the other person.

And one thing you must do to be able to understand someone else is listen to them.

Being a good listener is important!

In that case, you may want to check to see if you’ve developed any bad listening habits or negative “listening styles.” Ted Cunningham, founding pastor of Woodland Hills Family Church in Branson, MO., has identified 10 bad listening habits you’ll want to make sure you don’t have:

NODDER
Cunningham describes the person with this bad listening habit as “the listener who took a management course at work that taught how to be emotionally responsive when someone is talking. As people share, give cues to let them know you are ‘listening.’ The Nodder takes it too far and gives a nod to each statement made. It is a mark of insincere listening.”

EYE-ROLLER
Most people would know this action is a demonstration of contempt. Cunningham notes about this bad listening habit, “In my opinion, out of all 10 bad listeners on this list, this is the most disrespectful. Eye-rolling shoots right past a person’s stories, ideas, or opinions and goes straight to his or her character. It attacks the core of someone’s personhood. The eye-roller screams, ‘You don’t matter!'”

BORED
The facial expression and/or the body language of this listener betrays the fact they really don’t want to be there but would rather be doing something else somewhere else.

DISTRACTED
This is the person who fails to connect and listen well to the other person because they allow themselves to be distracted either with their own thoughts and/or feelings, or by something in the environment (their phone, a television, looking out a window, the actions of someone else, etc.).

EYE-WANDERER
The eye-wanderer is that person who glazes over your conversation because they are always gazing over you, past you, around you, or at anything or anyone other than you.

WATCH-GLANCER
This person either needs or wants to be somewhere else, so they keep glancing at their watch to see how soon they can bail on you.

ONE-UPPER
This is the person who will interrupt your conversation or story to tell their own story of how they have “one-upped” you regarding what you were talking about. They have done more, seen more, met more, know more, etc. because they have greater experiences and they want to let you know that.

ONE-DOWNER
This is like the one-upper, just in the opposite direction. This is the person who will interrupt you to let you know they’ve had it harder and worse than you did.

OVER-VALIDATER
This person fits between the one-upper and one-downer because they don’t try to either one-up or one-down you because they’ve experienced everything you have and are that person who knows “exactly how you feel” or “exactly what you’re going through.”

BOTTOM-LINER
This is the person who actually doesn’t want to hear a story, they only want enough details to get the idea of what you’re talking about. They don’t want to “waste their time” hearing anything more than what is necessary to “get the gist” of what you’re trying to talk about.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of bad listening habits but these 10 negative listening styles are very common. Have you adopted any of them? If so, you’ll want to break the habit and practice better, more respectful and more effective listening styles.

Scotty