10 Tips to Effective & Active Listening Skills
Do you ever need someone to listen to you? Our mentors are available.
Listening makes our loved ones feel worthy, appreciated, interesting, and respected. Ordinary conversations emerge on a deeper level, as do our relationships. When we listen, we foster the skill in others by acting as a model for positive and effective communication.
In our love relationships, greater communication brings greater intimacy. Parents listening to their kids helps build their self-esteem. In the business world, listening saves time and money by preventing misunderstandings. And we always learn more when we listen than when we talk.
Listening skills fuel our social, emotional and professional success, and studies prove that listening is a skill we can learn.
The Technique. Active listening is really an extension of the Golden Rule. To know how to listen to someone else, think about how you would want to be listened to.
While the ideas are largely intuitive, it might take some practice to develop (or re-develop) the skills. Here’s what good listeners know — and you should, too:
1. Face the speaker. Sit up straight or lean forward slightly to show your attentiveness through body language.
2. Maintain eye contact, to the degree that you all remain comfortable.
3. Minimize external distractions. Turn off the TV. Put down your book or magazine, and ask the speaker and other listeners to do the same.
4. Respond appropriately to show that you understand. Murmur (“uh-huh” and “um-hmm”) and nod. Raise your eyebrows. Say words such as “Really,” “Interesting,” as well as more direct prompts: “What did you do then?” and “What did she say?”
5. Focus solely on what the speaker is saying. Try not to think about what you are going to say next. The conversation will follow a logical flow after the speaker makes her point.
6. Minimize internal distractions. If your own thoughts keep horning in, simply let them go and continuously re-focus your attention on the speaker, much as you would during meditation.
7. Keep an open mind. Wait until the speaker is finished before deciding that you disagree. Try not to make assumptions about what the speaker is thinking.
Have you tried and tried but your best is still not good enough? Don’t know what to do next? Talk to a mentor.
8. Avoid letting the speaker know how you handled a similar situation. Unless they specifically ask for advice, assume they just need to talk it out.
9. Even if the speaker is launching a complaint against you, wait until they finish to defend yourself. The speaker will feel as though their point had been made. They won’t feel the need to repeat it, and you’ll know the whole argument before you respond. Research shows that, on average, we can hear four times faster than we can talk, so we have the ability to sort ideas as they come in…and be ready for more.
10. Engage yourself. Ask questions for clarification, but, once again, wait until the speaker has finished. That way, you won’t interrupt their train of thought. After you ask questions, paraphrase their point to make sure you didn’t misunderstand. Start with: “So you’re saying…”
As you work on developing your listening skills, you may feel a bit panicky when there is a natural pause in the conversation. What should you say next? Learn to settle into the silence and use it to better understand all points of view.
Ironically, as your listening skills improve, so will your aptitude for conversation. A friend of my partner once complimented me on my conversational skills. I hadn’t said more than four words, but I had listened to him for 25 minutes.
75 Responses to “10 Tips to Effective & Active Listening Skills”
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You are so right Faith! We not only have to learn emotional control, but also mental control in order to really listen and not be formulating our rebuttal! Listening is an art form that takes lots of practice!
This is very helpful, my husband says I never listen to him,now I know what he is on about. I have learnt a lot by just going through this article. One needs to learn emotional control to be able to listen to other people.
Am really appreciate this site, because it will make me improve on my listening aspect.
thanks and very beutifully written susie. very useful for improving listening skills.
Good one Charlie! :-)
Sorry I wasn’t listening. What did you say?
That I had to write a paper on healthful communication skills I love Greenday BPE;-)
Heyy! Thanks alot
this is very helpful, now i can develop my listening skill.
Thanks once again.
thnx this is very helpful 4 me!
thnk u sooooooooooooo much this is very hlpful for me…..
thank you so much!!!!!!
i have learned a lot of things by visiting this site.
i will surely improve my listening skills
thanx
Hi,
Thanks for this information. I have got one more way to improve your listening. Just sit quite alone, close your eyes, and try to listen how many sounds you can hear. And try to notice type of sounds. It Really works.
So glad you found this article helpful Edwin! All of us can learn how to be more effective communicators and the biggest part of that is learning to listen more effectively.
alot gained thanx
“Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.” (Proverbs 16:32) It is very rare that a person who makes false accusations is a trusted by others as a source of information. When someone is spouting off about you making statements that are damaging to your reputation it is far better to be patient and hear them out than to burst out in defense. There are a number of things that can happen: 1) you actually hear some critique from them that is valid and have an opportunity to make changes to your life; 2) they continue their diatribe and seeing that it does not goad you into a quarrel they up the intensity until they show themselves to be the fool that they are; 3) you wait until you can calmly respond to their accusations showing the false nature of their claims.
“A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.” (Proverbs 15:1)
How do we hanlde following situation as per sarah
Sarah Marshall says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Its so difficult to hear someone out until they’ve made their point when their topic is damaging your reputation, especially when none of it is true. Sticky situations, sometimes its not always good to let them finish completely because sometimes…they…never…finish……….ever. And that can be taken as “well she’s not even defending herself, shes guilty!”
Good question Roy! Your attitude is definitely a factor that can affect my listening skill. Your attitude affects how your brain fires, which in turn affects what you hear and how you apply that. If I’m excited about the day and what I am going to be hearing, I can listen and remember. If I am tired and expect to be bored, my listening and retention definitely goes downhill.
It has been very hard for me as a student to remain attentive.Most so when the lectures are so gloomy,is my attitude a factor that can affect my listening skill.
good article but this also applies to listening to people over the phone when people talk to you, i have a struggle with this.
You know, that’s a good point, Sarah — and that type of dialogue is typical in, say, political debates, where the game is to score points in a short, memorable soundbite.
In that situation, the game is completely changed, and interruption and talking-over are basically mandated. But everyone knows (or should) that such is basically theater.
And if someone is trying to destroy your reputation in front of others, that is certainly worth calling out!
Its so difficult to hear someone out until they’ve made their point when their topic is damaging your reputation, especially when none of it is true. Sticky situations, sometimes its not always good to let them finish completely because sometimes…they…never…finish……….ever. And that can be taken as “well she’s not even defending herself, shes guilty!”
So true Andrew! When someone is in an ‘emotionally heightened’ state there usually isn’t a lot of listening going on! Unfortunately emotions have to cool down in order to listen and in order to feel heard. That’s the difficult part.
This is a great article. I would also add a few other tips: have a baseline understanding of how often you experience “internal interruptions” (edited according to Terms of Service).
Also, keep in mind, particularly with regards to Point 9 (when someone has a bone to pick with you): if someone is still communicating in an emotionally heightened way, they probably don’t feel heard yet.
Thanks for these useful thoughts. God bless you!