“What, what did you say?” I often find myself saying this when talking to children. The likely culprit as to why is bad listening habits. “Most people spend more time listening than they do any other communication activity, yet a large percentage of people never learn to listen well.” (TLSC, 2008) The example above is what I like to call “pseudo listening.” People will think of something else but appear to hear and receive only about half of the intended message. Recently at my father's (Ron's) company, due to a pseudo case of listening, a $400,000 piece of equipment was not marked correctly. When delivered to the customer at Company B, the storm doors did not fit properly on the drying unit. As one can only imagine, this created a lot of chaos and heartache for both Ron and Company B, due to bad listening habits. Communication is a two-way street, however, it seems the onus is on the recipient of the message. As the recipient you have to decode the message, in other words, assign meaning to what the source says. (Pearson, Nelson, Titsworth, Harter, 2003) If you demonstrate poor listening skills you will not get clear meaning from sources of verbal communication. Negative Factors Some of the factors that caused a collapse in my father's company were, to begin with Ron and the owner of company B never spoke to each other before the product was delivered. All communications were handled by an intermediary company (for the purpose of this story I will call the intermediary, Mr. Secondly, the incorrect specifications were given to Ron by Mr. sheet of paper on the speaker and write down important and useful points. Above all, ask questions to get evidence to support the source's message. This way you can significantly alleviate the problems resulting from poor listening. Really good information, but in the real world people will always be "pseudo listeners" because they are a multi-tasking nation. This is exactly how it's been going for days now. The real problem occurs when I talk to children and they don't listen, well that's another story on its own……..! ReferencesPearson, Nelson, Titsworth and Harter. (2003). Human communication. Retrieved January 11, 2015, from University of Phoenix, Week One, rEsource.com. 102 Website.Oregon State University, (2008) Retrieved January 11, 2015, from http://oregonstate.edu/listeningTLSC. (2008) Retrieved January 11, 2015, from www.tlsc.org