The two principles of listening that I need to work on are work at listening and reducing emotional deaf spots. An emotional deaf spot is when someone is speaking to you, and it sparks a memory or trigger word, and then you just get distracted and starting going down a rabbit hole of what that means to you. While you are side tracked and going down that rabbit hole, you are not hearing the next part of the conversation being spoken to you. Manning (2018) discussed that when you become emotionally deaf due to an invaded thought, your listening efficacy drops almost immediately to zero (p. 214). The second factor I need to work on is to work at listening. Manning (2018) describes the actions of someone who needs to work on listening as someone who does not emotionally pay attention, especially with maintaining poor eye contact and poor posture. Manning (2018) also described someone who can be so familiar or close with someone that you can almost predict what they can say, so you mentally check out. I have 100% found myself doing that before. I have had a close family member ask me to repeat what they just told me and the last thing I remembered was something they actually said two to three minutes ago.
I get to work at 6 am, we have been short staffed, and our patient assignments are heavy. Being an active listener during report is critical for the safety and plan of care for our patients. At 6 am, I am tired and groggy. Maintaining proper eye contact and actually absorbing information that is told during morning huddles and shift report can make a difference. Roche et. al (2021) stated “We show that a listener’s understanding of why a miscommunication occurs differentially impacts how they approach language processing and decision making. We frame our understanding of how listeners approach miscommunication in a one-sided communication in terms of general communication principles that may be shared by dialogic communication processes.” This goes to show that actively listening and being open with discussion prevents less errors with communication. If you are involved with communication rather than just sitting and absorbing the information, there is better outcome.
References:
Manning, G., & Curtis, K. (2019). The Art of Leadership (Sixth ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781260140439/cfi/6/6!/4/2@0:0 (Links to an external site.)
