Active listening is a form of listening in which the listener remains engaged with his or her interlocutor in a dynamic way. It is a process of listening attentively as the other person speaks, paraphrasing and reflecting what is said, and withholding judgments and advice. When active listening is practiced, it makes the other person feel heard and valued. It is a solid foundation for success in any conversation in all settings, whether at work, at home or in social situations.
Differences between hearing and listening
People usually practice two ways of “listening“: one, in which we can perform various tasks while listening to something (listening to music while driving, watching TV while eating or listening to our partner talking to us while we think about tomorrow’s pending tasks), and the other, in which we really listen because we devote our full attention to the speaker and then reflexively respond to what he or she has said. Essentially, we have just reviewed the differences between what we mean by hearing (perceiving something through the sense of hearing) and listening (paying attention to what is heard). In English, the difference is found between the terms hearing and listening. Let us now review the main characteristics of active listening. The differences between hearing and listening are: Hearing
- Accidental
- Involuntary
- Effortless
Listen to
- Focused on a target
- Volunteer
- Intentional
Characteristics of active listening
- Attention. The person who practices active listening must pay attention to the key points. He/she must be attentive. He/she must avoid any kind of distraction.
- No prejudices. Active listening should avoid premature value judgments about the speaker’s message, focusing on the content of the speaker’s message and not on the speaker’s personality and appearance.
- Listen to facts but also to emotions. The speaker’s gestures, facial expression and body language should be carefully observed. A good listener should try to understand the speaker’s points of view and put himself in the place of his feelings and emotions.
- Focus on other speakers with kindness and generosity. A good listener makes a deliberate effort to give other speakers an opportunity to also express their thoughts and opinions and tries to learn from each of them.
- Take advantage of opportunities. A person who is an active listener tries to take advantage of opportunities, such as learning opportunities.
Components of active listening
In order to develop an adequate active listening, we must take into account three essential components, which summarize in some way the characteristics we have previously seen
- Comprehension. The listener pays attention to the speaker’s verbal and nonverbal language to fully understand what the speaker is trying to communicate.
- Retention. The listener tries to recall the key points of the speaker’s message using his or her memory or by taking notes.
- Response and feedback. Respond to the speaker to confirm that you have understood their message and go deeper into the topic. This only happens after analyzing and remembering what they have said (components one and two).
Some authors also add some other components such as:
- Show that we are listening: it is not only a matter of active listening, but also of making our interlocutor realize that we are listening. To do this, we must use appropriate body and facial language.
- Assertive communicationAssertive communication: this type of communication is of great help to achieve active listening, especially through certain assertive techniques.
Benefits of active listening
Active listening offers numerous benefits for those who practice it. Let’s see what they are:
Trust
Trust is an important asset that active listening can help us establish. In a work environment it can be common for some colleagues to distrust us or be reluctant to share information. Is it possible that this is because we have not practiced active listening? Learning to actively listen creates the opportunity to rebuild trust and form healthier working relationships with our team.
Conflict resolution
Active listening is crucial when we are faced with conflict, whether it is work, family or social, because we often only see problems from our own perspective. Sometimes we become so entrenched in our own position that we don’t even think about it from the other person’s perspective. Active listening encourages us to see problems from other points of view, to recognize the feelings of others and, in general, to appreciate them. Think of a time when you have disagreed with a colleague or witnessed a conflict between two colleagues at work. Did you see the issue from their perspective, and was it this that created the misunderstanding? Active listening lays the foundation for listening to the other person’s message and moving toward conflict resolution. It also fosters a culture of respect in the workplace or with our immediate environment.
Do not lose important information
The fact that active listening focuses on hearing the entire message means that we engage at a higher level with the speaker, allowing us to absorb more specific details of the interaction. If we are receiving instructions or training, we will be able to recall details more easily.
Anticipating problems
Active listening involves seeking clarification to ensure that you have correctly understood the speaker’s message. This gives you the opportunity to gauge whether there is a problem, or whether what they are telling us is a sign that one might arise, and devise a strategy to address the issue. It is important that we allow ourselves to develop a full sense of the problem and evaluate all the different aspects, based on the details you hear. This can help us uncover a potentially underlying problem and tackle the root issue, rather than just curing the symptoms and watching the problem resurface later.
Strengthens knowledge
Active listening is a powerful skill that supports learning so that we can move our organization or our projects forward. Concentrating more intensely on listening allows us to assimilate information and better understand different topics, and then remember more of the details of what we have learned. Active listening is exceptionally useful when planning a strategy or organizational change. This may involve applying what we have learned to steer our organization in a new direction or pursue innovation. Greater attention will help us to understand the big picture and, as a result, to analyze more comprehensively how developments might affect our organization and how we might capitalize on them.
Non-verbal communication for active listening
Non-verbal communication is essential for active listening. Some of the most common signs we will see below, although we must always be cautious depending on the culture where we are interacting, as there may be small – or large – differences:
- Smile: small smiles can be used to show that the listener is paying attention to what is being said or as a way of agreeing or being pleased with the messages being received. Combined with the usual head nods, smiles can be very useful in affirming that messages are heard and understood.
- Eye contact: It is normal and often encouraging for the listener to look at the speaker. However, eye contact can be intimidating, especially for more timid speakers. In this regard, it is useful to combine eye contact with smiles and other nonverbal messages to encourage the speaker.
- Posture: can tell a lot about the sender and receiver in interpersonal interactions. The attentive listener tends to lean slightly forward or sideways while seated. Other signs of active listening can be a slight tilt of the head or resting the head on one hand.
- Distraction: the active listener should not be distracted and, therefore, should refrain from fidgeting, watching the clock, doodling, playing with his hair or picking his nails.
Barriers that can prevent us from active listening
Noise. This is one of the main factors that interfere with active listening; it can be defined as anything that interferes with the ability to attend to and understand a message. There are many types of noise, the four most likely to be encountered in public speaking situations are:
- Physical noise
- Psychological noise
- Physiological noise
- Semantic noise
Attention span. A person can only sustain attention for so long, even more so in recent times, when many argue that today’s audiences have lost the ability to sustain attention to a message. Regardless of whether these claims are well founded, we are likely to notice that, even when our attention is focused on something in which we are deeply interested, from time to time we have some distractions.
Receiver bias. Good listening involves keeping an open mind and withholding judgment until the speaker has completed the message. In contrast, biased listening is characterized by jumping to conclusions; the biased listener believes that “I don’t need to listen because I already know.” Listener biases can refer to two things: biases with reference to the speaker and preconceived ideas and opinions about the topic or message. Everyone has biases, but good active listening should control them.
Listening apprehension. It is the fear of not being able to understand the message or process the information correctly, or not being able to adapt our thinking to include the new information in a coherent way. In some situations, attention may become scattered if we think that the information presented is too complex to fully understand,
Exercises to improve your active listening
There are a multitude of exercises and techniques that can strengthen our active listening skills. The most common ones consist of group dynamics in which the aim is to consolidate certain skills. Some of them are:
- The blind man. To do this exercise, divide a group of people into two teams. Each of them will choose one person, who will be in charge of assuming the role of the blind man with blindfolded eyes. The others must help him or her cross a room from one end to the other without bumping into any obstacles along the way. The relevant part of the dynamic is to understand the importance of the way in which the blind person interprets and follows the instructions given by the others.
- Tell me your story. In this exercise, a pair of people should tell each other a story in a summarized way, emphasizing the important and significant events. Afterwards, each member of the pair will introduce his or her partner and tell the story he or she has heard, reflecting the feelings and emotions expressed in the story. Once everyone has finished telling their stories, there will be a discussion and a round of questions such as these: Did you feel that your partner listened and understood you? how did you feel when they told your story and your feelings? how did you feel when you were the one who had to tell and reflect the other person’s story and emotions? what was the most difficult thing to repeat and reflect?
The purpose of this dynamic is to train attention, to focus on what is being said and on the emotion that accompanies the message, and to become aware that feeling deeply listened to frees you and connects you emotionally with your interlocutor. It also allows us to train our ability to empathize with other people.
Some examples of active listening
Reviewing some examples of active listening can be very useful to acquire the necessary skills. Nothing better in this case than reviewing some fragments of TV series or movies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL6VhAORa-w In this sequence of the series “Everybody Loves Raymond”, we can see how through active listening we can solve a situation that a priori was quite complicated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sNn7g99JEI In this fragment of “Legally Blonde” we can see how nonverbal communication is of great help to establish active listening, with slight smiles, nods and small facial and body gestures.
The importance of active listening
As we have seen, active listening is a skill that requires certain skills that can be learned, and has numerous benefits in any environment, whether business, personal or family. Do you think you are usually able to listen actively and interpret your interlocutor correctly?
