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Recently the top executives of a major factory in the Chicago expanse were asked to survey the function that listening plays in their work. Later, an executive seminar on listening was held. Hither are 3 typical comments made by participants:

  • "Frankly, I had never thought of listening as an important field of study past itself. Merely at present that I am enlightened of information technology, I think that perhaps fourscore% of my work depends on my listening to someone, or on someone else listening to me."
  • "I've been thinking dorsum about things that accept gone wrong over the by couple of years, and I suddenly realized that many of the troubles have resulted from someone not hearing something, or getting information technology in a distorted way."
  • "Information technology's interesting to me that we have considered and then many facets of communication in the company, but have inadvertently overlooked listening. I've most decided that it's the almost important link in the company's communications, and information technology's obviously also the weakest one."

These comments reflect office of an awakening that is taking identify in a number of management circles. Business is tied together by its systems of advice. This communication, businessmen are discovering, depends more on the spoken word than it does on the written discussion; and the effectiveness of the spoken discussion hinges not then much on how people talk equally on how they heed.

The Unused Potential

It tin can exist stated, with practically no qualification, that people in general do non know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom accept they caused the necessary audible skills which would let those ears to exist used finer for what is chosen listening.

For several years we take been testing the ability of people to understand and call back what they hear. At the University of Minnesota we examined the listening power of several grand students and of hundreds of business organization and professional people. In each example the person tested listened to short talks by kinesthesia members and was examined for his grasp of the content.

These all-encompassing tests led us to this full general decision: immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only about half of what he has heard—no matter how advisedly he thought he was listening.

What happens as fourth dimension passes? Our own testing shows—and information technology has been substantiated past reports of enquiry at Florida State Academy and Michigan State Universityi—that two months after listening to a talk, the average listener volition remember only near 25% of what was said. In fact, after nosotros take barely learned something, nosotros tend to forget from one-one-half to one-third of it within eight hours; it is startling to realize that frequently nosotros forget more in this first short interval than we do in the next six months.

Gap in Training

Backside this widespread inability to listen lies, in our opinion, a major oversight in our system of classroom instruction. We have focused attention on reading, because information technology the main medium by which nosotros learn, and nosotros have practically forgotten the fine art of listening. About six years are devoted to formal reading instruction in our schoolhouse systems. Niggling emphasis is placed on speaking, and almost no attention has been given to the skill of listening, strange as this may be in view of the fact that so much lecturing is done in college. Listening training—if information technology could be chosen training—has often consisted but of a serial of admonitions extending from the first grade through college: "Pay attention!" "Now get this!" "Open your ears!" "Mind!"

Certainly our teachers feel the demand for expert listening. Why then have so many years passed without educators developing formal methods of teaching students to mind? Nosotros accept been faced with several false assumptions which have blocked the educational activity of listening. For example:

(1) Nosotros accept causeless that listening ability depends largely on intelligence, that "brilliant" people listen well, and "dull" ones poorly. In that location is no denying that low intelligence has something to exercise with inability to mind, but we take profoundly exaggerated its importance. A poor listener is non necessarily an unintelligent person. To be good listeners we must apply certain skills that are caused through either experience or grooming. If a person has not caused these listening skills, his ability to sympathise and retain what he hears will exist low. This tin can happen to people with both loftier and low levels of intelligence.

(2) We have assumed that learning to read will automatically teach i to listen. While some of the skills attained through reading employ to listening, the assumption is far from completely valid. Listening is a different activity from reading and requires unlike skills. Enquiry has shown that reading and listening skills do non ameliorate at the same charge per unit when merely reading is taught.

This ways that in our schools, where piddling attention is paid to the aural element of communication, reading power is continually upgraded while listening ability, left to falter along on its own, actually degenerates. Every bit a fair reader and a bad listener, the typical student is graduated into a society where the chances are high that he will have to listen almost 3 times as much as he reads.

This commodity besides appears in:

The barriers to listening preparation that have been built up by such imitation assumptions are coming down. Educators are realizing that listening is a skill that can be taught. In Nashville, for example, the public schoolhouse arrangement has started preparation in listening from elementary grades through high school. Listening is also taught in the Phoenix school system, in Cincinnati, and throughout the land of North Dakota. Well-nigh two dozen major universities and colleges in the land at present provide courses in listening.

At the University of Minnesota we take been presenting a form in listening to a large segment of the freshman class. Each grouping of students that has taken listening training has improved at least 25% in ability to empathise the spoken word. Some of the groups have improved as much every bit 40%. We have also given a course in listening for developed instruction classes made up generally of business and professional people. These people have made some of the highest gains in listening power of any that we have seen. During ane period, 60 men and women well-nigh doubled their listening test scores afterwards working together on this skill one dark a week for 17 weeks.

Ways to Improvement

Any course or any effort that will lead to listening comeback should practise two things:

one. Build awareness to factors that affect listening ability.

two. Build the kind of aural experience that can produce good listening habits.

At to the lowest degree a starting time on the first of these ii educational elements tin exist made by readers of this article; a certain caste of awareness is developed by merely discussing factors that bear upon listening power. Later we shall discuss some steps that might exist taken in club to work at the second chemical element.

Tracks & Sidetracks

In general, people feel that concentration while listening is a greater problem than concentration during whatever other course of personal advice. Really, listening concentration is more difficult. When nosotros listen, concentration must be achieved despite a factor that is peculiar to aural communication, one of which few people are enlightened.

Basically, the trouble is caused by the fact that we think much faster than we talk. The average rate of speech for nigh Americans is around 125 words per minute. This charge per unit is ho-hum going for the human brain, which is made up of more than xiii billion cells and operates in such a complicated but efficient style that it makes the neat, mod digital computers seem slow-witted. People who study the brain are not in consummate agreement on how it functions when we retrieve, but near psychologists believe that the basic medium of thought is linguistic communication. Certainly words play a large part in our thinking processes, and the words race through our brains at speeds much higher than 125 words per minute. This means that, when we listen, we ask our encephalon to receive words at an extremely ho-hum pace compared with its capabilities.

It might seem logical to tiresome down our thinking when we listen so as to coincide with the 125-word-per-minute voice communication rate, but slowing downward thought processes seems to be a very difficult affair to do. When we mind, therefore, we go on thinking at high speed while the spoken words go far at low speed. In the human action of listening, the differential betwixt thinking and speaking rates means that our encephalon works with hundreds of words in add-on to those that we hear, assembling thoughts other than those spoken to us. To phrase information technology another style, nosotros tin listen and still have some spare time for thinking.

The use, or misuse, of this spare thinking time holds the answer to how well a person can concentrate on the spoken word.

Instance of the disenchanted listener. In our studies at the Academy of Minnesota, nosotros find most people exercise not utilize their spare thinking fourth dimension wisely as they mind. Permit us illustrate how this happens past describing a familiar experience:

A, the boss, is talking to B, the subordinate, about a new plan that the firm is planning to launch. B is a poor listener. In this example, he tries to listen well, but he has difficulty concentrating on what A has to say.

A starts talking and B launches into the listening process, grasping every give-and-take and phrase that comes into his ears. Merely correct abroad B finds that, considering of A'southward slow charge per unit of speech, he has time to call back of things other than the spoken line of idea. Subconsciously, B decides to sandwich a few thoughts of his own into the aural ones that are arriving so slowly. So B quickly dashes out onto a mental sidetrack and thinks something like this: "Oh, yes, before I leave I want to tell A about the big success of the meeting I called yesterday." Then B comes back to A's spoken line of thought and listens for a few more words.

There is enough of time for B to do just what he has done, dash away from what he hears and so return quickly, and he continues taking sidetracks to his own private thoughts. Indeed, he tin can inappreciably avoid doing this considering over the years the process has go a stiff aural habit of his.

But, sooner or afterward, on ane of the mental sidetracks, B is almost certain to stay abroad too long. When he returns, A is moving forth alee of him. At this point it becomes harder for B to understand A, simply because B has missed part of the oral message. The individual mental sidetracks become more inviting than ever, and B slides off onto several of them. Slowly he misses more and more of what A has to say.

When A is through talking, information technology is safe to say that B will have received and understood less than one-half of what was spoken to him.

Rules for Proficient Reception

A major chore in helping people to heed better is teaching them to apply their spare thinking time efficiently every bit they mind. What does "efficiently" mean? To reply this question, we made an all-encompassing study of people's listening habits, especially trying to discover what happens when people listen well.

We found that good listeners regularly engage in four mental activities, each geared to the oral soapbox and taking place meantime with that oral discourse. All four of these mental activities are neatly coordinated when listening works at its best. They tend to directly a maximum amount of thought to the message being received, leaving a minimum amount of fourth dimension for mental excursions on sidetracks leading away from the talker's thought. Here are the iv processes:

(1) The listener thinks alee of the talker, trying to anticipate what the oral soapbox is leading to and what conclusions volition be drawn from the words spoken at the moment.

(2) The listener weighs the bear witness used by the talker to support the points that he makes. "Is this show valid?" the listener asks himself. "Is information technology the complete evidence?"

(iii) Periodically the listener reviews and mentally summarizes the points of the talk completed thus far.

(iv) Throughout the talk, the listener "listens betwixt the lines" in search of meaning that is not necessarily put into spoken words. He pays attention to nonverbal advice (facial expressions, gestures, tone of phonation) to come across if it adds meaning to the spoken words. He asks himself, "Is the talker purposely skirting some surface area of the subject? Why is he doing so?"

The speed at which we remember compared to that at which people talk allows enough of time to accomplish these four mental tasks when nosotros listen; however, they do require exercise earlier they can become role of the mental agility that makes for good listening. In our training courses we have devised aural exercises designed to give people this practice and thereby build upward good habits of aural concentration.

Listening for Ideas

Some other factor that affects listening power concerns the reconstruction of orally communicated thoughts once they have been received past the listener. To illustrate:

The newspapers reported non likewise long ago that a church was torn downward in Europe and shipped stone by stone to America, where it was reassembled in its original form. The moving of the church building is analogous to what happens when a person speaks and is understood by a listener. The talker has a thought. To transmit his thought, he takes it apart past putting information technology into words. The words, sent through the air to the listener, must and then be mentally reassembled into the original idea if they are to be thoroughly understood. Just virtually people do not know what to listen for, and and then cannot reconstruct the thought.

For some reason many people accept bang-up pride in being able to say that above all they attempt to "get the facts" when they listen. It seems logical enough to do so. If a person gets all the facts, he should certainly understand what is said to him. Therefore, many people try to memorize every single fact that is spoken. With such practice at "getting the facts," the listener, we tin safely assume, volition develop a serious bad listening habit.

Memorizing facts is, to begin with, a virtual impossibility for about people in the listening state of affairs. As 1 fact is being memorized, the whole, or part, of the next fact is about certain to be missed. When he is doing his very best, the listener is likely to catch but a few facts, garble many others, and completely miss the residual. Fifty-fifty in the instance of people who can aurally digest all the facts that they hear, 1 at a fourth dimension as they hear them, listening is still likely to exist at a low level; they are concerned with the pieces of what they hear and tend to miss the broad areas of the voice communication.

When people talk, they want listeners to understand their ideas. The facts are useful chiefly for constructing the ideas. Grasping ideas, we have plant, is the skill on which the practiced listener concentrates. He remembers facts merely long plenty to understand the ideas that are congenital from them. But then, almost miraculously, grasping an idea volition assistance the listener to call back the supporting facts more effectively than does the person who goes afterward facts alone. This listening skill is 1 which definitely tin be taught, one in which people can build feel leading toward improved aural communication.

Emotional Filters

In different degrees and in many different ways, listening ability is affected by our emotions.2 Figuratively nosotros reach up and mentally plow off what nosotros do not want to hear. Or, on the other mitt, when someone says what we especially desire to hear, we open up our ears wide, accepting everything—truths, half-truths, or fiction. Nosotros might say, and then, that our emotions act as aural filters. At times they in effect cause deafness, and at other times they make listening altogether too easy.

If we hear something that opposes our nigh securely rooted prejudices, notions, convictions, mores, or complexes, our brains may become over-stimulated, and not in a direction that leads to good listening. We mentally plan a rebuttal to what nosotros hear, codify a question designed to embarrass the talker, or perhaps but plough to thoughts that support our ain feelings on the field of study at hand. For example:

The firm'south accountant goes to the full general manager and says: "I have but heard from the Bureau of Internal Acquirement, and…" The full general manager suddenly breathes harder as he thinks, "That blasted bureau! Can't they leave me alone? Every year the government milks my profits to a bespeak where…" Scarlet in the face, he whirls and stares out the window. The label "Agency of Internal Revenue" cuts loose emotions that stop the full general manager's listening.

In the meantime, the accountant may go on to say that hither is a chance to relieve $3,000 this year if the general manager will take a few simple steps. The fuming general director may hear this—if the auditor presses hard enough—but the chances are he will fail to embrace it.

When emotions make listening too easy, it usually results from hearing something which supports the deeply rooted inner feelings that nosotros hold. When we hear such back up, our mental barriers are dropped and everything is welcomed. Nosotros enquire few questions near what we hear; our critical faculties are put out of committee by our emotions. Thinking drops to a minimum because we are hearing thoughts that nosotros have harbored for years in support of our inner feelings. It is expert to hear someone else think those thoughts, so we lazily bask the whole experience.

What can nosotros do virtually these emotional filters? The solution is not easy in practice, although it can be summed up in this uncomplicated admonition: hear the human out. Following are two pointers that oftentimes help in training people to do this:

(1) Withhold evaluation—This is one of the most important principles of learning, especially learning through the ear. It requires cocky-command, sometimes more than many of us can muster, but with persistent practice it tin can be turned into a valuable addiction. While listening, the main object is to encompass each point fabricated by the talker. Judgments and decisions should be reserved until after the talker has finished. At that fourth dimension, and just then, review his main ideas and appraise them.

(2) Chase for negative prove—When we mind, information technology is human to proceed a militant search for bear witness which proves us correct in what we believe. Seldom practise we brand a search for evidence to testify ourselves wrong. The latter blazon of effort is not piece of cake, for behind its awarding must prevarication a generous spirit and existent breadth of outlook. However, an important office of listening comprehension is plant in the search for negative bear witness in what we hear. If we make upwards our minds to seek out the ideas that might prove us wrong, too equally those that might bear witness us right, nosotros are less in danger of missing what people have to say.

Benefits in Business

The improvement of listening, or simply an effort to make people aware of how important their listening ability is, tin can exist of great value in today's business concern. When people in business fail to hear and understand each other, the results can be costly. Such things as numbers, dates, places, and names are particularly easy to confuse, but the most straightforward agreements are oft subjects of listening errors, likewise. When these mistakes are compounded, the resulting cost and inefficiency in business communication go serious. Building awareness of the importance of listening among employees tin can eliminate a large percentage of this blazon of aural error.

What are some of the specific problems which better listening tin help solve?

Less Newspaper Work

For i affair, it leads to economic system of communication. Incidents created by poor listening frequently give businessmen a real fear of spoken communication. Every bit a consequence, they insist that more and more than communication should be put into writing. A bully deal of communication needs to be on the tape, but the pressure level to write is often carried too far. The smallest particular becomes "memoed." Paper work piles higher and higher and causes part of the tangle nosotros phone call red record. Many times less writing and more speaking would be advisable—if nosotros could plan on good listening.

Writing and reading are much slower communication elements than speaking and listening. They crave more personnel, more equipment, and more space than do speaking and listening. Often a stenographer and a messenger are needed, to say naught of dictating machines, typewriters, and other writing materials. Few people ever feel it is safe to throw away a written communication; so filing equipment is needed, along with someone to do the filing.

In oral advice there are more homo senses at work than in the visual; and if there is good listening, more tin often be communicated in one message. And, perhaps about important of all, there is the give-and-take characteristic of oral communication. If the listener does not understand a message, he has the opportunity to straighten matters out and so and there.

Up Communication

The skill of listening becomes extremely important when we talk about "upward advice." There are many avenues through which management can send messages downward through a business organization, but at that place are few avenues for motility of information in the up direction. Possibly the most obvious of the upward avenues is the human chain of people talking to people: the man working at the bench talks to his foreman, the foreman to his superintendent, the superintendent to his boss; and, relayed from person to person, the information eventually reaches the elevation.

This communication chain has potential, but it seldom works well considering it is full of bad listeners. In that location tin can be failure for at least three reasons:

  • Without skilful listeners, people practice not talk freely and the flow of communication is seldom prepare in move.
  • If the flow should get-go, only one bad listener is needed to cease its motion toward the top.
  • Even if the menses should continue to the top, the messages are likely to be desperately distorted along the way.

It would be absurd to assume that these upward communication lines could be made to operate without hitches, but there is no reason to think that they cannot be improved past better listening. Merely the first steps must be taken by top direction people. More than and better listening on their part tin can prime number the pumps that get-go the upward period of data.

Homo Relations

People in all phases of concern need to feel free to talk to their superiors and to know they will be met with sympathetic understanding. Simply too many superiors—although they announce that their doors are always open—fail to heed; and their subordinates, in the face of this failure, do not experience free to say what they want to say. Every bit a result, subordinates withdraw from their superiors more and more. They fail to talk about of import issues that should be aired for both parties' benefit. When such issues remain unaired, they often turn into unrealistic monsters that come back to plague the superior who failed to listen.

The remedy for this sort of aural failure—and it should exist applied when subordinates feel the need to talk—is what nosotros have called "nondirective listening." The listener hears, really tries to understand, and after shows understanding past taking activeness if it is required. Above all, during an oral discourse, the listener refrains from firing his ain thoughts back at the person talking or from indicating his displeasure or disapproval by his mannerisms or gestures; he speaks up only to ask for clarification of a point.

Since the listener stands the chance of hearing that his most dearly held notions and ideas may be wrong, this is not an easy thing to exercise. To listen nondirectively without fighting back requires more courage than most of us tin muster. Just when nondirective listening tin can be applied, the results are usually worth the effort. The persons talking have a hazard to unburden themselves. Equally of import, the odds are better that the listener can counsel or act effectively when the time comes to brand a move.

Listening is only one phase of human relations, only ane attribute of the administrator'due south task; by itself it volition solve no major issues. All the same the past experience of many executives and organizations leaves no doubt, in our opinion, that better listening tin can atomic number 82 to a reduction of the human frictions which beset many businesses today.

Listening to Sell

High-pressure salesmanship is rapidly giving manner to low-pressure methods in the marketing of industrial and consumer goods. Today's successful salesman is likely to eye his attention on the customer-problem approach of selling.

To put this approach to work, the skill of listening becomes an essential tool for the salesman, while his vocal agility becomes less important. How a salesman talks turns out to be relatively unimportant because what he says, when information technology is guided by his listening, gives power to the spoken word. In other words, the salesman'due south listening becomes an on-the-spot form of customer enquiry that can immediately be put to piece of work in formulating any sales talk.

Regardless of the values that listening may concur for people who live by selling, a great many sales organizations seem to concord to the conviction that glibness has magic. Their efforts at comeback are aimed mainly at the talking side of salesmanship. It is our confidence, however, that with the typical salesman the power to talk will almost take care of itself, but the ability to listen is something in real need of improvement.

In Briefing

The virtually important diplomacy in business are conducted around conference tables. A great bargain has been said and written about how to talk at a briefing, how to compromise, how to become problem-centered, and how to cope with certain types of individuals. All these things can be very important, but too often the experts forget to say, "Showtime and foremost you lot must learn to listen at a conference."

The reason for this is elementary when we think of the basic purpose for holding almost any conference. People get together to contribute their different viewpoints, knowledge, and experience to members of the group, which then seeks the best of all the conferees' thinking to solve a common problem. If there is far more talking than listening at a conference, nevertheless, the oral contributions fabricated to the group are hardly worth the breath required to produce them.

More and better listening at whatever conference is certain to facilitate the exchange of ideas so important to the success of a coming together. Information technology besides offers many other advantages; for case, when participants do a good job of listening, their conference is more likely to remain centered on the problem at hand and less likely to go off on irrelevant tangents.

The commencement steps toward improved conference listening tin be taken by the group leader. If he will just brand an opening statement calling attention to the importance of listening, he is very likely to increase the participants' aural response. And if the leader himself does a good job of listening, he stands the take chances of being imitated past the others in his group.

Conclusion

Some businessmen may want to take steps to develop a listening improvement program in their companies. Hither are 14 suggestions designed to carry on what we hope this article has already started to practise—build awareness of listening.

(1) Devote an executive seminar, or seminars, to a discussion of the roles and functions of listening as a business concern tool.

(ii) Apply the filmed cases now becoming available for management training programs.3 Since these cases present the problem as it would appear in reality, viewers are forced to practice good listening habits in club to be sure of what is going on—and this includes not only hearing the audio track merely also watching the facial mannerisms, gestures, and motions of the actors.

(3) If possible, bring in qualified speakers and inquire them to discuss listening with special reference to how it might use to business organization. Such speakers are bachelor at a number of universities where listening is being taught every bit a function of communication training.

(iv) Carry a self-inventory by the employees regarding their listening on the task. Provide anybody with a simple course divided into spaces for each 60 minutes of the day. Each space should be further divided to allow the user to keep track of the amount of time spent in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Discuss the results of these forms after the communication times have been totaled. What per centum of the fourth dimension exercise people spend listening? What might improved listening mean in terms of job effectiveness?

(5) Give a exam in listening ability to people and bear witness them the scores that they brand. In that location is at to the lowest degree 1 standardized test for this purpose.4 Talk over the meaning of the scores with the individuals tested.

(half dozen) Build up a library of spoken-word records of literature, speeches, and so forth (many tin be purchased through tape stores), and make them available in a room that has a record thespian. Also, lend the records to employees who might wish to take them home to enjoy them at their leisure. For such a library, material pertinent to the employees' jobs might be recorded so that those who are interested tin mind for educational purposes.

(7) Tape a number of actual conference sessions that may exist held past plant superintendents or others. When new people go to work for the visitor, ask them to heed to these sessions as part of their initial training. Check their comprehension of what they hear past means of brief objective tests. Emphasize that this is being done because listening is of import on the new jobs.

(8) Set up up role-playing situations wherein executives are asked to cope with complaints comparable to those that they might hear from subordinates. Enquire observers to comment on how well an executive seems to listen. Do his remarks reflect a good job of listening? Does he go on himself from becoming emotionally involved in what the subordinate says? Does the executive mind in a way which would encourage the subordinate to talk freely?

(9) Ask salesmen to divide a notebook into sections, ane for each customer. After making a call, a salesman should write down all useful information received aurally from the client. Every bit the data grows, he should refer to it before each return visit to a customer.

(x) Where a sales arrangement has a number of friendly customers, invite some of the more articulate ones to join salesmen in a grouping discussion of sales techniques. How do the customers experience about talking and listening on the part of salesmen? Endeavor to get the customers to make listening critiques of salesmen they see.

(xi) In a training session, plan and hold a conference on a selected trouble and tape-record it. Afterwards, play dorsum the recording. Discuss information technology in terms of listening. Do the oral contributions of unlike participants reflect good listening? If the conference should go off the rail, effort to clarify the causes in terms of listening.

(12) If at that place is time later on a regularly scheduled conference, hold a listening critique. Inquire each member to evaluate the listening attention that he received while talking and to report his analysis of his own listening performance.

(xiii) In important management meetings on controversial issues attempt Irving J. Lee's "Procedure for 'Coercing' Agreement."5 Under the ground rules for this procedure, which Lee outlined in detail in his article, the chairman calls for a menses during which proponents of a hotly debated view tin can state their position without interruption; the opposition is limited to (a) the asking of questions for description, (b) requests for information concerning the peculiar characteristics of the proposal being considered; and (c) requests for information every bit to whether information technology is possible to check the speaker's assumptions or predictions.

(14) Sponsor a series of lectures for employees, their families, and their friends. The lectures might exist on any number of interesting topics that have educational value as well as amusement features. Indicate out that these lectures are bachelor every bit part of a listening improvement program.

Not all of these suggestions are applicative to every situation, of course. Each business firm will have to adapt them to its own particular needs. The almost important thing, however, may not be what happens when a specific suggestion is followed, but rather simply what happens when people become aware of the problem of listening and of what improved aural skills can do for their jobs and their businesses.

1. Come across E. J. J. Kramar and Thomas B. Lewis, "Comparison of Visual and Nonvisual Listening," Periodical of Advice, November 1951, p. 16; and Arthur Westward. Heilman, "An Investigation in Measuring and Improving Listening Ability of College Freshmen," Voice communication Monographs, November 1951, p. 308.

2. Meet Wendell Johnson, "The Fateful Procedure of Mr. A Talking to Mr. B," HBR January–February 1953, p. 49.

3. See George W. Gibson, "The Filmed Example in Direction Training," HBR May–June 1957, p. 123.

4. Brown-Carlsen Listening Comprehension Test (Yonkers-on-Hudson, World Book Company).

5. HBR Jan–February 1954, p. 39.

A version of this article appeared in the September 1957 result of Harvard Business Review.