It was back when I was fifteen years old and I had my first real summer job at a local grocery store in my hometown. Since it was technically my first job I didn’t really know what to expect about what it would be like working there and more importantly what the people I would be working for were like. I was admittedly a bit nervous about it when I first started because I had never had a real boss before because at my previous job I was essentially my own boss. As it turned out, my bosses were great and so were the people I worked with and working there became one of the more interesting work experiences I’ve ever had. This was mostly because of the variety of people I worked with and their differing backgrounds and personalities (my bosses in particular). I had two different bosses I reported to and the most interesting thing about them was how completely different they were in terms of their personality, and especially in their listening styles.
Your listening style is the typical pattern associated with your listening behaviors, which can be manifested as your attitudes, beliefs, and predispositions towards the listening process (McCornack, 2009). There are four listening styles and my two bosses both encompassed them all in their day to day behaviors and interactions with the staff. Action-oriented listeners want concise and informative conversations that allow them to make the right decision and to make it quickly. Another similar style is people-oriented listeners who have specific time allotted for talking with others and make their schedules known. One of my bosses used both of these styles because they were very much time-oriented and wanted conversations to be strictly about business, so it was obvious from this that they were most concerned with efficiency. The third style is people-oriented listeners who uses interactions to make connections with other people by sharing their emotions and making it known that they care. The last style is content-oriented listeners who like these interactions to be intellectually stimulating and take it as a challenge because they typically take more time to consider all the information before making decisions. I would consider my second boss to be a people-oriented listener because he was more concerned about the person he was talking to than the work he or she did and therefore took on a role of someone you could talk to when you needed help with something.
The ironic thing about this is that my boss who was more focused on time and efficiency was a woman, while the one focused on becoming connected with people was a man. Now I know that men and women don’t always fall into the same categories, but I just thought it was interesting because many men are more time and action oriented while women tend to be more people and content oriented.
Do you think that someone can possess multiple listening styles from both ends of the spectrum (ex. Both time-oriented and people oriented)?
References
- McCornack, S. (2009). Reflect and relate: An introduction to interpersonal communication. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
