What is Partial Listening and Proactive Listening?

Partial Listening

Partial Listening means selective listening. Most of the time when a conversation is going on we do not pay attention to the whole idea of speaker, we listen to specific information and ignore the rest.

For example; a professor is delivering a lecture, you listen to him with best of the intent and then become distracted, either by stray thoughts or by anything said by the professor. So, this half understanding of yours is partial listening.

Moreover, we can say

Partial listening is one of the listening levels a listener may achieve or indulge in. A person involved in partial listening will not give attention to each and every stimuli transmitted by the speaker. He/she used to partially listen to the content of the message.

He will not acknowledge and evaluate some of the stimuli transmitted by the speaker due to some reasons like; decrease or increase in the voice and pitch of the speaker, grammar, mannerism etc will affect the tendency of the partial listening. So, this level of listening prevents the listener to completely understand and evaluate the message of the speaker and may lead to miss some important information.

Read Also: Barriers in Communication - Sender & Receiver Barriers 

Proactive Listening

Proactive listening is to be willing and disciplined to listen. You need to listen receptively to become proactive listener. Proactive listener not only tries to listen to the content of the message but also hears for emotions and feelings of the person being listened.

He/she tries to grasp the inherent meaning and underlying intent. Such type of listener not only listens but listens to understand what the person is actually saying. When it will be appropriate, such listener will let himself silence and take time to process information before reacting to the content itself. He/she will try to judge the emotions through the tone of voice facial expressions and body language so as to grasp the real intent of the person being listened.

Proactive Listening:

Proactive listening is to be willing and disciplined to listen. You need to listen receptively to become proactive listener. Proactive listener not only tries to listen to the content of the message but also hears for emotions and feelings of the person being listened. He/she tries to grasp the inherent meaning and underlying intent. Such type of listener not only listens but listens to understand what the person is actually saying. When it will be appropriate, such listener will let himself silence and take time to process information before reacting to the content itself. He/she will try to judge the emotions through the tone of voice facial expressions and body language so as to grasp the real intent of the person being listened.

Don't Jump to Conclusion in Listening:

When we partially listen to the speaker and assume that what he in going to say next, basically we are about to jump the conclusion in the beginning without listening to the whole conversation of the speaker. In this way, we miss some important information and estimate from the gist of information speaker provides that what speaker is going to say or what is his/her point before fully listening to the speaker.

This is called jumping to conclusion. This habit of jumping to the conclusion may be harmful and create a barrier in the communication process because sometimes the speaker is not planning to make the point you think he is going to.

Can a Person Change in Partial or Critical Listening?

A person cannot get involved in different levels and types of listening at the same time. For instance; being a partial listener a person will not pay full attention to a presentation. He may spend most of the time in day dreaming and other thoughts. Thus he will miss some important information and eventually he will not be able to form any opinion, evaluate and judge the information which is the base of critical listening.