Barriers to Effective Listening in the

Corporate/Social world
-Akshat Mittal, FYBBAF; Roll No. 05

Effective listening, unlike what most people believe, is an active process and not a
passive one. You need to pay full attention to the sender and what they’re talking
about. Effective listening is done with the goal of understanding the sender with
certainty so that the message can be correctly interpreted and responded to.
However, many times even with the best of intentions, listening can be hampered
both in the corporate and social world. Here are some barriers to effective
listening:

1. Environmental and Physical Barriers

Environment has a huge impact on not only how we perceive things, but how we
hear them too. A dark room can make you sleepy, a cold room can make you
shiver and not pay attention to what’s being talked about. Environmental factors
such as lighting, temperature, and furniture affect our ability to listen.
Noise is another major barrier when it comes to listening. When you can’t hear a
person or make out their voice in a cacophony of sounds, you can’t expect to
effectively understand them either.

2. Cognitive Biases/Personal Barriers

Our personal biases or cognitive preconceptions can also stifle effective listening.
Often people think they can multitask the job of listening, but human brains
aren’t wired for such multitasking for an extended length of time. For eg,
playing with your pen in a meeting for too long can diminish your memory
retention and capacity to listen.

3. Distractions (Physical and Mental)

Being distracted and preoccupied during the peak hours of work or during
important meetings and seminars is one of the biggest barriers to effective
listening.
Some common objects/emotions that distract us normally are –
 Mobile Phones
 Negative emotions (related or unrelated to the sender)
 Visual distractions (like people walking by
 4. Poor Structure
Poor message structure or construction of the message, being too vague and
ambiguous in the message, or semantics filled jargon-based messages are all
examples of poor structuring that leads to a loss of effective understanding of the
sender.

5. Interruption
Interruptions (both intentional and unintentional) serve as a flow-breaker in any
conversation and result in a loss of understanding for both the sender and the
receiver. Intentional interruptions should be kept to a minimum and saved for the
end of the message.

6. Physical State
Just like our mental state, physical state has an equal if not greater impact on our
ability to listen. Someone suffering from a fever will not be able to concentrate
for an extended duration to the sender.

7. Passive Listening
As mentioned earlier, listening is an active endeavor and trying to passively listen
won’t result in memory retention.
In a meeting, passively listening while preoccupied in one’s thoughts will lead to a
loss of understanding about the topic at hand.

These are some of the barriers to effective listening in both the corporate and
social world. These factors result in the message not being
heard/understood/interpreted correctly which can lead to massive bottlenecks and
miscommunication. Hence, great care must be taken to mitigate them as much as
possible,