How many times have you realized you weren’t really listening to the music on your iPod? You know you heard the music, and you may have sung along, but minutes later, you realize you must have been thinking about something else because you can’t recall what you heard.

Hearing and listening are not the same thing. Hearing is the physiological process of perceiving sound, the process through which sound waves are picked up by the ears and transmitted to the brain. Unless there is a physical reason why hearing does not take place, it is an involuntary process—you can’t turn it on or off. But you can, to some degree, decide what sounds you’re going to notice. This is where listening comes in.

Listening is a multidimensional process of recognizing, understanding, accurately interpreting, and responding effectively to the messages you hear. It is much more than just hearing words or being able to recall information (Bodie, Worthing, Imhof, & Cooper, 2008; Janusik, 2005). Listening involves processing what others say and do, paying attention, understanding (Thomas & Levine, 1994), and then creating messages that respond to the speaker and are directed toward achieving goals (Bodie et al., 2012; Janusik, 2005; Wiemann, Takai, Ota, & Wiemann, 1997). In the next section, we examine how this crucial process works.