Being a good listener isn’t easy—it’s hard work. Numerous challenges exist that can drive you away from active listening and toward incompetence. Overcoming these challenges is essential to improving your listening skills.

In the Golden Globe–winning Showtime series Episodes, characters Beverly and Sean Lincoln are British television writers with a hit BBC comedy series. Encouraged to remake their show in the United States for an American audience, things go terribly wrong when they meet Matt LeBlanc (of Friends fame) for lunch to discuss the project. While they’re describing their show to Matt, he proceeds to tweet and text on his phone, not even looking at them. Concerned that he’s not listening, they stop talking, and Beverly asks, “Do you want to finish that before we . . .” “No, no,” Matt responds dismissively, “I’m with you—you’re English, you have some sort of show . . .” and rolls his eyes. As they continue their description, he attacks their every comment, at one point sarcastically interjecting, “So, you want me for the ‘old fat guy’s’ part—thanks.” When Sean tries to salvage the encounter by saying, “We are huge admirers of your work . . . ,” Matt’s phone goes off, and he waves the couple to be quiet so he can take the call—leaving them to sit awkwardly, waiting for him to finish.

Everyone experiences barriers to active listening. Perhaps audience members were obviously texting while you were giving a presentation. Maybe you were politely pretending to listen during a group discussion but were actually tuned out. Or maybe during a heated discussion with your brother, he seemed more interested in aggressively “scoring points” than truly listening to what you had to say (like the Episodes example). In this chapter so far, we’ve discussed a number of listening pitfalls, including failing to identify the right purpose for listening, multitasking, and neglecting to adapt your listening style to the situation. But in this section, we focus on three of the most common and substantial barriers to active listening—selective listening, pseudo-listening, and aggressive listening—and how you can overcome them.