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ACTIVE LISTENING SKILLS, EXAMPLES AND
EXERCISES
In today's world of high tech and high stress, communication is more important than ever, however we spend less and less time really listening to each other. Genuine, attentive listening has become rare.
Active listening skills can help build relationships, solve problems, ensure understanding and avoid conflict. By becoming a better listener, you ’ ll improve your workplace productivity, as well as your ability to lead a team, persuade and negotiate.
TOPICS COVERED:
Benefits of Active Listening Four different listening styles Examples of active listening Barriers to effective listening Tips to becoming an effective listener
Active listening definition
Active listening requires the listener to fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said. You make a conscious effort to hear and understand the complete message being spoken, rather than just passively hearing the message of the speaker.
Benefits of active listening
There are many important benefits of active listening, these include:
1. Builds deep trust - As you cultivate the habit of listening sincerely, you invite people to open up. They can sense that you will not be jumping to conclusions based on superficial details. They also realize that you care enough about them to listen attentively. While building trust takes time, it leads to great benefits such as lifelong friendships and a promise of help in difficult times. 2. Broadens your perspective - Your own perspective in life is not the complete truth or how everyone else sees it. The way you understand life from your beliefs and thinking is only one way to look at it – listening to other people’s perspectives allows you to look at life from different perspectives, some of which you may not have thought of before. 3. Strengthens your patience - The ability to be a good listener takes time and you need to develop it with regular efforts over time. But as you gradually get better and better at listening, an automatic benefit is that you develop patience. Patience to let the other person express his or her feelings and thoughts honestly while you don’t judge. 4. Makes you approachable - As you present yourself as a patient listener, people feel more naturally inclined to communicate with you. By being there for them, you give them the freedom to express their feelings.
listen through the descriptions, evidence, and explanations with which a speaker builds his or her case.
For example, when you ’ re a passenger on an airplane, a flight attendant delivers a brief safety briefing. The flight attendant says only to buckle up so we can leave. An action-oriented listener finds buckling up a more compelling message than a message about the underlying reasons.
3. Content
Content-oriented listeners are interested in the message itself, whether it makes sense, what it means, and whether it ’ s accurate. Content-oriented listeners want to listen to well-developed information with solid explanations.
4. Time
People using a time-oriented listening style prefer a message that gets to the point quickly. Time-oriented listeners can become impatient with slow delivery or lengthy explanations. This kind of listener may be receptive for only a brief amount of time and may become rude or even hostile if the speaker expects a longer focus of attention.
Examples of active listening
Here are some examples of statements and questions used with active listening:
1.Paraphrasing - "So, you want us to build the new school in the style of the old one?"
2. Brief verbal affirmation - "I appreciate the time you’ve taken to speak to me"
3. Asking open-ended questions - "I understand you aren’t happy with your new car. What changes can we make to it?" 4. Asking specific questions - "How many employees did you take on last year?" 5. Mentioning similar situations - "I was in a similar situation after my previous company made me redundant." 6. Summarize questions - A job candidate who summarises their understanding of an unclear question during an interview. 7. Notice people speaking - A meeting facilitator encouraging a quiet team member to share their views about a project. 8. Summarize group conversations - A manager summarizing what has been said at a meeting and checking with the others that it is correct.
Barriers to effective listening
Everyone has difficulty staying completely focused during a lengthy presentation or conversation, or even relatively brief messages. Some of the factors that interfere with good listening might exist beyond our control, but others are manageable. It’s helpful to be aware of these factors so that they interfere as little as possible with understanding the message. Here are some key barriers:
1. Noise
Noise is one of the biggest factors to interfere with listening; it can be defined as anything that interferes with your ability to attend to and understand a message. There are many kinds of noise, the four you are most likely to
1. Face the speaker and maintain eye contact
Talking to someone while they scan the room, study a computer screen, or gaze out the window is like trying to hit a moving target. How much of the person's divided attention you are actually getting? Fifty percent? Five percent?
In most Western cultures, eye contact is considered a basic ingredient of effective communication. When we talk, we look each other in the eye. Do your conversational partners the courtesy of turning to face them. Put aside papers, books, the phone and other distractions. Look at them, even if they don't look at you. Shyness, uncertainty or other emotions, along with cultural taboos, can inhibit eye contact in some people under some circumstances.
2. Be attentive and relaxed
Give the speaker your undivided attention, and acknowledge the message. Recognise that non-verbal communication is very powerful. In order to be attentive you’ll:
Maintain eye-contact with the speaker Direct yourself towards the speaker Pay attention to what's being said Put aside distracting thoughts
Mentally screen out distractions, like background activity and noise. In addition, try not to focus on the speaker's accent or speech mannerisms to the point where they become distractions. Finally, don't be distracted by your own thoughts, feelings, or biases.
3. Keep an open mind
Listen without judging the other person or mentally criticizing the things she tells you. If what she says alarms you, go ahead and feel alarmed, but don't say to yourself, "Well, that was a stupid move." As soon as you indulge in
judgmental bemusements, you've compromised your effectiveness as a listener.
Listen without jumping to conclusions and don ’ t interrupt to finish their sentences. Remember that the speaker is using language to represent the thoughts and feelings inside her brain. You don't know what those thoughts and feelings are and the only way you'll find out is by listening.
4. Don't interrupt or cut them off
Children used to be taught that it's rude to interrupt. I'm not sure that message is getting across anymore. Certainly the opposite is being modelled on the majority of talk shows and reality programs, where loud, aggressive, in-your-face behaviour is condoned, if not encouraged.
Interrupting sends a variety of messages: I'm more important than you are What I have to say is more interesting I don't care what you think I don't have time for your opinion
We all think and speak at different rates. If you are a quick thinker and an agile talker, the burden is on you to relax your pace for the slower, more thoughtful communicator — or for the guy who has trouble expressing himself.
5.Ask questions to clarify what they are saying
When you don't understand something, of course you should ask the speaker to explain it to you. But rather than interrupt, wait until the speaker pauses. Then say something like, "Back up a second. I didn't understand what you just said about…"
6.Ask questions and summarize to ensure understanding
the shoulders. These are clues you can't ignore. When listening, remember that words convey only a fraction of the message.
References: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/active-listening-skills-examples-and-exercises Rothwell, J. D. (2010). In the company of others: An introduction to communication. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
