Relational Listening Analysis

Early last week, I sat at lunch with a friend. We were seated in a booth during the lunch rush hour. The noisy, cramp space provided a particularly difficult listening situation. She began to tell me about a situation she had been going through with a mutual friend of ours. I sat and listened intensely. Given the subject matter, her volume was reduced in order to maintain secrecy. I was not sure of the information I would be gathering from this conversation so I participated in relational listening. The emotions and feeling of my friend were paramount in understanding the significance of what she was telling me. Throughout the entire conversation she seems concerned and worried for our mutual friend. This translated over to me, the listener. …show more content…
I was able to connect via eye contact and read her body language. She leaned in and lowered her volume. Her doing this demanded my full attention, so that I could select to hear her voice. However, at times I became distracted as people walked by and close neighbors laughed and conversed. To reduce my getting distracted, I leaned in closer to hear my friend better and asked for clarification to what she was saying. This quickly corrected the issue and the amount of times I was distracted decreased. Also, I found myself interrupting every once in a while to provided what I believe could be a solution to the situation. Given that we were in a booth during the conversation, the communication situation was not really effected by my communication. For the most part, it made the leaning in on both parts of myself and my friend easier, because there was a table. Had there not been a table we would have had to lean on our knees. I learned that as a listener in noisy environments, I really need focus to hear and understand what the speaker is saying. Additionally, my ability to listen and take away the ambient noise is actually much better than I thought. I was able to focus and get the vital emotional information from my