Perhaps the greatest challenge to active listening is overcoming selective listening—taking in only bits and pieces of information from a speaker (those that attract your attention the most) and dismissing the rest. This was the problem with the salesperson’s listening: she perceived “married couple,” stereotypically presumed “male buyer,” and tuned out Steve’s repeated assertions that Kelly was the customer. When you selectively listen, like the salesperson who missed out on a potential sale, you lose out on the opportunity to learn information from others that may affect important personal or professional outcomes.
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Selective listening is difficult to avoid because it is the natural result of fluctuating attention. To overcome selective listening, you shouldn’t strive to listen to everything all at once. Instead, try to slowly and steadily broaden the range of information you can actively attend to during your encounters with others. You can do this by practicing the suggestions for enhancing attention discussed earlier in this chapter (p. 167). The most important technique is to avoid multitasking with mediated communication—