Although Bill heard Deb's statements regarding her recent struggles on a committee, he was watching students interact in the hallway and failed to realize how terribly upset Deb was over her situation. Bill's ineffective listening was most likely due to:

This question lacks options, options are:

a) Boredom

b) Rehearsing

c) Bias and judgment

d) Partial listening and distraction

The correct answer is d.

Explanation:

We talk about partial listening when the message is not understood, that is, in partial listening there is a level of attention and willingness to listen to the other, however, we only focus on what interests us. There is no empathy. Distractions or external noises limit and alter the conversation, requiring more effort to process the information that reaches our brain. The real problem lies in how much and what part of the received message has been heard and to what extent we have deployed all our capacity to do so with the clear intention of reaching the maximum understanding of it.