https://youtu.be/dzhH2hlNSfs
Somers White said, “A good speaker is a good listener who hears what lesser speakers fail to.”
Have you ever been inside a room with everyone screaming at each other?
“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply,” said Stephen R. Covey. Many humans acquire one or more behaviors that keep them from understanding others’ messages. Poor listening skills leads to poor communication. I’m currently employed as a Crisis Line Worker, answering the National Suicide Prevention Line. Through this position, I’ve learned the most important aspect of communications that is rarely taught is…
Listening.
Sure, we listen to our professors talk everyday in front of the class, but I’m talking about when we are engaged in conversations. How well are we listening or are we just listening to respond?
Have you ever been at a family dinner or a conference meeting where you have thought to yourself, “get me out of here”? The following 7 poor listening habits may be the communication barrier you’re watching unravel, which makes you want to run away. As you continue to read through this blog, you will see examples of poor listening habits from the film, “12 Angry Men.” (By the way, if you haven’t seen 12 Angry Men, you definitely should pick a night to watch it, instead of your usual Netflix show. I promise you won’t be disappointed.)
7 Poor Listening Habits:
Pseudo-listening is an imitation of true listening in which the receiver’s mind is elsewhere. A pseudolistener may give the impression that he or she is listening by looking you in the eye, and they may even nod and smile, but their minds are in another world. An example of Pseudo-listening is seen in 12 Angry Men, when Juror 7, Jack Warden, was distracted throughout a majority of the conversation but looked like he was attentive to the conversation. The whole time he was primary thinking about leaving and going to a baseball game. Jack gave the other jurors the impression that he was listening to the debate, while he was truly thinking about everything except the trial.
There are many bad habits that people attain because they do not practice effective listening skills. Stage hogging is a poor listening style in which the receiver is more concerned with making his or her own point than in understanding the speaker. Those who stage hog are individuals who are only interested in articulating their own perspective and do not want to respectfully keep an open mind concerning the input of others. These individuals may permit you to speak every once in a while, but only so they can catch their breath and use your words to say what they want as a rebuttal. Juror 10 and juror 3 are prime examples for portraying this type of poor listening style. Juror 3 is the prominent juror who dominates over almost every man in the room, other than juror 8 who speaks up for the rest of the men. Juror 3’s anger fuels his stage hogging mechanism that propels his voice to be heard above anyone who has anything to say against him. Another example in the film is when all the jurors agreed, “Let’s go around the room and tell him why he is guilty.” This showed that no one wanted to listen to juror 8 because they were all stage hogging and didn’t want to understand where he was coming from. In the beginning all the jurors didn’t want to see this trial from another perspective that was different from their own, so they stage hogged a lot of the debate trying to only argue against the opposing ideas that were mentioned by juror 8. I found it very interesting that one solution juror #8, Henry Fonda, proposed to break the stage hogging, was for the second vote to be privately written down on paper because of the peer influence that occurred the first time called group think. Group think is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Typically this is due to peer pressure.
Selective listening is a listening style in which the receiver responds only to messages that interest him or her. People who fall short to this poor listening habit will respond only to the parts of a speaker’s remarks that interest them, discarding everything else. Similar to feeling like you are talking to a tree, unless you discuss something that strikes their attention. An example of selective listening in the film, was every time someone tried to agree with juror 8, juror 10 wanted to speak up because they were claiming the innocence of the young boy who was on trial. Juror 10 yelled and argued that the boy was guilty. His personal life experiences with mischief children influenced his negative, blind perspective towards the situation. He refused to listen to the other main points juror 8 was trying to explain. Juror 3 is always interrupting and overpowering others in the room; however, he only did this when someone was going against what he was saying. Otherwise, juror 3 would hold his tongue and let the individuals who were agreeing with him speak. Juror 1 seems to be selective listening at times because he only wanted to be the dictator over everyone; therefore, he seemed withdrawn from the conflict at times. He only seemed focused on organizing a production of conflict, instead of trying to help manage the conflict by listening to all messages that were being sent. Towards the end of the debate, he changes his mind because he decides to listen to juror 8’s point of view, which challenges his own interest.
Alfred Brendel said, “The word Listen contains the same letters as the word Silent.”
Filling in gaps is a listening habit that involves adding details never mentioned by a speaker to complete a message. This individual thinks they know the whole story, but they fail to recognize that they are only viewing their own perspective and there is a possibility of it being wrong. A prime example of this depicted in 12 Angry Men, was when juror 3 made the assumption with the blind vote assuming that it was juror 5, when really it was juror 9 that changed his vote. These individuals create false information so that when they retell what they listened to, they look like they know everything. The real message becomes distorted by an incomplete message that does not accurately display what actually happened.
“The most golden rule is – Do not ever ignore advice, whether you feel it is good or bad. Listening never harms anyone. It is how you take it, apply it and use it that matters in the end.” – anonymous
Another poor listening style is insulated listening, which is almost the opposite of selective listening. Insulated listening is a style in which the receiver ignores undesirable information. Instead of searching for information to use, these listeners will try to avoid topics that are uninteresting to them. Whenever a topic arises that they are not comfortable with, they would rather run away. Insulated listeners don’t want to face something that needs to be discussed. Going off topic is an indicator that they are depicting insulated listening. Juror 3 displays this poor style of listening when he fails to hear anyone who has a doubt that the boy may be innocent. He ignores others by not allowing them to talk by getting up aggressively and storming away to different parts of the room on numerous occasions.
People who participate in defensive listening take innocent statements as personal attacks. Defensive listening is a response style in which the receiver perceives a speaker’s comments as an attack. A bias opinion in the film was shown when juror 4 stated all children from the slums are bad. Juror 5 became defensive because he was raised in the slums. Juror 5 reaffirms his viewpoint and doesn’t acquire new information because he feels attacked and upset that someone categorized all children who grow up in the slums, as possible future murderers. Jurors 7, 3, and 10 also do this especially when juror 7 gets questioned why he changed his decision to “not guilty,” he becomes defensive and responses accordingly. Most of the time, defensive listeners suffer from unstable self-images, and avoid facing this by projecting these insecurities onto others.
Ambushing is a response style in which the receiver perceives a speaker’s comments as an attack.When an individual uses this poor style of listening, they should expect defensiveness from the other person. This person will listen attentively but only because he or she wants to collect information to use against you to attack what you are trying to say. Personal issues with juror 5’s son fueled his anger; therefore, he ambushed everyone without listening to the opposing viewpoint. Juror #8 said “You don’t believe the boy, but you believe the woman. She’s one of them, isn’t she?” How juror #5 responded to this statement was ambushing. He yelled in anger and that only fueled the resentment he had towards juror 8 until the end of the conflict when he could see a reflection of himself in his action of ripping up a picture of him and his son. Another example of ambushing is the bathroom scene asking questions in an interrogating manner. Also, when juror 3 asked juror 9 a question and juror 9 responded slowly, then juror 3 listened long enough to formulate an attack. There was a lot of ambushing that transpired in this conflict.
Juror 8 was a hero in 12 Angry Men because he was a leader that succeeded in listening to others and practiced affective listening habits; therefore, he was able to convey effective messages that changed the course of direction saving a young boy’s life.
“Listening is often the only thing needed to help someone.” – anonymous
If it’s difficult to understand the examples and you wanted to watch it, below are most of the main conflicts that occur in the film. It’s not on Netflix, I already looked 🙂
Are you guilty of having any of these habits? It’s okay to speak up 😉 We all have at least one of these!
Andrea M. Capodagli, Author
SIMPLELANE.LIFE 
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