Active listening is a vital skill that goes beyond merely hearing words spoken by a person. It’s about fully engaging with the speaker, understanding their message, and responding thoughtfully. A good listener uses body language, eye contact, and other nonverbal cues to show their focus and attentiveness. When you’re the listener, don’t assume that you understand correctly — or that the speaker knows you’ve heard them. Mirror their emotions by periodically paraphrasing key points. Reflecting is an active listening technique that indicates that you and your counterpart are on the same page.
As tempting as it may be to counter someone’s opinion you disagree with, take the higher and safer road. Find a way to steer the conversation in a direction that’s a win-win for both (or all) people. Curiosity and interest in people is a sign of intelligence and humility. You recognize that you aren’t the center of the universe and that others may have something valuable to offer you — even if it’s something you may disagree with. Something as simple as, “Can you tell me more about that?
When someone says something, instead of you jumping right in to rattle off your own thoughts and advice, instead, check in with a short summary. A lot of times people try to work on their listening by practicing skills. And of course there’s nothing wrong with skills, but without the right mindset, the skills are going to fall flat. Like so many other things about human relationships, listening is about the intention and mindset you bring to the interaction, not just the “best practices” involved. So start out by reframing your mindset, and setting an intention to give, not take, as you listen.
Practice Empathy By Putting Yourself In Their Shoes
But a lot of times we choose to kinda gloss over all of that in our listening because it’s complex, and takes more work than just taking people’s words at face value. “If I say ‘nice dress, Angela,’ and smile and have a pleasant facial expression, you’re going to interpret my message in a very different way than if I say ‘nice dress, Angela,’ and roll my eyes,” she says. One of the sneakiest ways we stop listening is by assuming we already know what someone is about to say. It happens most in our closest relationships—with a partner, a parent, a longtime coworker—where we’ve heard some version of the story before and our brain checks out before the sentence is finished.
- The good news is, the “lost art of listening” isn’t all that hard to regain.
- Rather than going into fix-it mode you can ask if they’d like comfort or solutions.
- Employees who operate in environments with strong listening norms report reclaiming over 25 hours each week that would otherwise be lost to rework and confusion.
- Sometimes people overshare, especially with those who show interest and empathy.
… it’s also terrible for listening, because it puts you in the position of just waiting for your turn to speak. Researchers Dr. Michael Nichols and Dr. Martha Straus differentiate between these two types of behaviors as active attention — aka, “I’m right there with you, I’m engaged in what you’re saying! ” — vs passive attention, where you’re attending to the conversation, but really mostly interested in what’s going on in your own head. Genuine curiosity is one of the four essentials of good listening, alongside being conscious, committed, and compassionate, Treasure says. He points out that “there’s always something to learn in every conversation”—even in the ones you’re sure you’ve had a hundred times before.
By concentrating on what the person is saying and how they are saying it, you’re less likely to misinterpret the message, leading to clearer, more effective communication. If you’ve got the right mindset these active listening skills will come naturally, with little thought. It’s never been more important — or more difficult — for leaders to meetwith-mature.com/ be good listeners. Job switching is rampant, and remote work means we don’t get the nonverbal cues we’d pick up from an in-person conversation.
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„Sometimes when we’re close to people, we have a lot of assumptions about our shared understanding of things. And so we might listen sort of casually,” Israel says. She recommends expressing empathy and then trying to go deeper when the folks you’re close with talk about what they’re going through. The more you practice active listening in low-stakes, daily situations, the easier it will be to do it in high-stakes conflict, she says. Studies have found that words account for only 10 to 30 percent of communication. Nonverbal cues, like body language, facial expressions, vocal cadence and intonation, breathing, physical positioning.
Otherwise, you “just end up looking like a bobblehead,” Arias says. Her preferred approach is timed nodding—nodding with intention at specific moments rather than continuously. “It can signal understanding and encouragement, and if you’re doing it with intention at certain points in your listening, it doesn’t look performative,” she says.
Try really hard to let the other person talk,” he says. “Take in the entire message, no interruptions allowed. “Empathy deals with shared experiences—sometimes we don’t have many, but in the big picture we’re all really more the same than we are different,” Tirpak says. It’s critical to hone leaders’ active listening skills and build new capabilities that strengthen conversations across the entire organization.
Maybe our hometown wasn’t boring, but deeply alienating and isolating. Such clarifications can spur more interesting follow-up questions. But listening is not one way and does not only produce pleasure for those being listened to.
In the age of distractions, active listening is both an art form and a vital skill to learn. Rather than jumping into a response after someone finishes speaking, soak in what you just heard. Try taking one mindful breath before you begin a sentence. Take this quiz and get a custom report based on your unique personality and goals. Start improving your confidence, your conversation skills, or your ability to bond – in less than an hour.
💙 If phone-away-eyes-forward still feels hard, let Jay Shetty walk you through Listening Deeply on the Daily Jay, a seven-minute reset for giving someone your whole attention. Ask yourself if you’re truly present or somewhere else in your head. Naming that to yourself takes its power away and lets you set your own noise aside, so you can turn toward the other person with a clearer mind. Listening is a big part of how you can help a friend with anxiety or depression. Or, to learn more about how to fill your relationships with mindfulness, check out our Relationships with Others series. There is also a cognitive component to good listening, where you pay attention to facts and details.
Instead, be fully present, offer a listening ear, and tune in to the other person’s emotional state. To sum up, listening is indeed an essential skill to success in life, and it is also one you can develop if it’s not your strong suit. Research will continue to advance the academic understanding of this valuable attribute but in the meantime, you can advance your own ability to use it to build your own life’s path toward fulfillment.