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Active Listening and the Art of Engaging your Audience

As a presenter, one of the hardest things to master is to engage your audience in a manner that focuses on your message, absorbs the information, and responds thoughtfully. In the era of smartphones and short attention spans, engaging your audience can be harder than ever. But not impossible! To understand how to reach out to your audience, you need to make them actively listen to your message. In other words, you need to understand and master the art of active listening and use it to engage your audience.

What is Active Listening?

Active listening involves the listener carefully understand, remember and thoughtfully respond to what they have heard. The technique of active listening entails conducting engaging conversations without judgment. Active listening can help individuals objectively understand the information and respond after carefully considering the context and non-verbal cues. The latter might include cues such as the pitch of someone’s voice or body language.

Active listening is a soft skill that is common in different professions. Some examples of active listening include people delivering training, conducting counseling sessions, or involved in dispute resolution. However, that’s not to say that the technique is limited to a few professions only. Active listening is one of the most prized skills that can also help you in your career and personal life. The implications of active listening can even go beyond one individual, as it can be great for supporting two-way communication. Such as during a presentation session when a presenter is looking to engage an audience actively.

Main Components of Active Listening

Since active listening involves considering both the verbal and non-verbal cues, the main components of the technique require carefully considering the context, mood, remembering the message, and responding to it accordingly. The main components of active listening require an individual to actively comprehend, retain and respond to what is being said.

Comprehension is the first step towards understanding the speaker. This involves taking into account both verbal and non-verbal cues to understand the message. As a speaker, it´s important to constantly check for understanding and ask probing questions to the audience to reveal if the message is coming across correctly.

It is only natural that the listener will forget what is being said as the conversation or presentation moves forward. This is why the listener needs to retain information by note-taking or retaining the gist of the message. Creating a PowerPoint presentation that can later be distributed or even shared in advance can be helpful for the audience.

Responding is the process of carefully replying to what is being said. This validates the speaker in what would otherwise be a passive conversation. Encouraging further communication, especially if the response is empathetic, can also be an active part of clear comprehension from both parties.

3 As of Active Listening

The 3 As of active listening include attention, attitude, and adjustment. If you are looking to enhance your active listening skills, you need to focus on these three aspects. Understanding them will also enable you to help engage your audience.

1. Attention

When it comes to barriers that prevent someone from being an active listener, attention plays a major role. Many people complain about being unable to sit through a 2-minute YouTube video, let alone a lengthy PowerPoint presentation. Enhancing your attention and focusing on the message is the first A of actively listening to a conversation.

Using Attention as a Presenter: As a presenter, you can reduce distractions by asking your audience to avoid interruptions from email or notifications on their smartphones. Alternatively, you can make them actively engage in your presentation by allowing them to view your slides on their handheld devices using a shared link. PowerPoint has a built-in feature called Office Presentation Service that is accessible from the Slide Show tab. It enables online sharing of your presentation slides. There are also third-party services that can be used to engage your audience with polls, quizzes, and feedback options.

2. Attitude

Passive conversations often result in people missing a lot of non-verbal cues. On the contrary, active listening entails understanding these cues to understand better what is being discussed. Your attitude towards a conversation determines whether you can actively understand the conversation or have psychological deaf spots preventing you from being an active listener. People who might consider the conversation ‘a waste of their time’ would find it hard to make the conversation meaningful.

Shaping the Attitude of your Audience: As a presenter, you will have to shape the attitude of your audience by showing them why the presentation is worth their time. Please don’t wait too long before reaching out to your audience, or they might end up with the wrong attitude towards your presentation. You must start with an impact, grab audience attention and ensure you have something they might find valuable. For example, a pitch deck that drags on how great your company or idea is likely to fall on deaf ears. The potential investors need to know how the venture might be worth their money and the Return on Investment (ROI) for them.

3. Adjustment

When listening to someone, we don’t know what the other person would say. This means that we need to be flexible, considerate, and patient to listen to the speaker actively. Putting aside personal biases and judgment. Enabling the speaker to complete their side of the message without interrupting them due to a negative attitude.

Adjusting Your Presentation: Presenters can often end up with at least a part of the audience that will never be satisfied with their presentation. You might also come across people looking to intimidate you because of their habit of being trouble mongers. In such a case, you need to be flexible as a presenter to enable your audience to give you the same leverage. Enabling you to engage people actively when listening to you. You can learn more about how to do this from our previous article about the importance of understanding the 20/60/20 Rule to engage your audience.

Why Active Listening Matters in a Presentation

Active listening has immense importance for presenters. This not only includes listening and responding to your audience effectively but also ensuring that your audience actively listens to you.

To Avoid Death by PowerPoint

Death by PowerPoint is a common phenomenon where text-heavy slides and boring presentations lead to uninterested, passive listeners. Therefore, active listening is essential to avoid this conundrum and deliver a presentation that remains meaningful and encourages call-to-action.

To Retain Audience Attention

Carrying a conversation forward is a two-way street. You need to not only speak but ensure that your audience is heard and their opinion valued. Two-way active listening is important to ensure you can retain audience’s attention during a presentation.

Keeping the audience’s attention is important in any presentation, as losing their focus can lead to them tuning out or becoming distracted. This can be done by using engaging visuals and stories, keeping your speech concise and on-point, and avoiding unnecessary distractions.

To Prevent a Passive Audience Response

No presenter wants to deliver a pitch deck that results in zero investor interest or a presentation at the workplace that yields no positive response from colleagues. By being an active listener and engaging your audience, you can prevent a passive response and turn it into something positive and meaningful.

To Prevent and Placate Dissent

Some would say that it is easier to step on a cultural minefield to offend someone than to remain likable by most people. Be it the ‘woke culture’ or the need to cater for multiculturalism. You need a group of active listeners to ensure your message isn’t taken the wrong way due to a miscommunication or that you can placate dissent by adjusting your tone.

To Encourage Call-to-Action

Most presentations come with some form of call-to-action. Even if it is to encourage the audience to think about a subject and form their own views. To reap the fruits of your final act, you need to ensure that you and your audience have been actively engaged in a meaningful conversation. This can not only encourage call-to-action but also help you win the respect of your audience.

Active Listening Techniques for Presenters to Engage their Audience

Now that we have discussed active listening in detail, it’s time to discuss engaging your audience using active listening techniques.

Focus on Audience Comprehension

Contrary to what you might expect, even the most well-versed audience might be least interested in a meaningful presentation. Short attention spans, handheld devices, and lifestyle marred by digital technology overuse are some of the many reasons that retaining your audience’s attention is harder than it was for our predecessors. This is why you need to remain focused on the level of comprehension of your audience. You might need to keep your presentation interactive by using brain teasers, conducting polls, or opening up the floor for a few questions before moving on with the next part of your presentation. These methods can help you gauge if your audience is actively listening to you.

Make Your Words Memorable for Audience Retention

There are many techniques you can use to make your words or phrases memorable during a presentation. You can apply the rule of three, the 10/20/30 rule, PechaKucha approach, and other methods for this purpose.

Actively Engage and Respond to Questions

Many times, no one seems to be interested in asking a question until you encourage at least one individual to do so. This often results in people actively looking to ask questions, even unnecessary and unrelated ones. To encourage active listening during a Q&A session, you should be patient even with the questions that seem irrelevant and respond to them. If you think you have a ruckus, you can begin asking counter questions to encourage active listening and preventing trouble mongers and passive listeners from asking questions to follow the bandwagon.

Learn from Feedback and Assessment

Few presenters actually rely on feedback—even fewer look to dig deep into the available data to analyze it. Several tools can gather audience feedback, including web apps like Mentimeter or Participoll and clickers used to gather instant audience feedback. Learning and assessing feedback is essential to understand how to engage your audience and improve your own active listening skills.

Final Words

Active listening skills can help you in the workplace or personal life and enable a deeper understanding of the conversations you engage in daily. Miscommunication, conflict, and lack of empathy are often associated with a lack of active listening. When translated to presentations, the same can spell ruin for you as a presenter and your reputation. But before you can engage your audience, you need first to ensure you are willing to comprehend, retain and respond empathetically. Doing so will help you encourage a similar response from the other side.

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Active Listening

Hear what people are really saying.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Key Takeaways:

• Listening well is a skill that you can learn.
• Good listening can help to improve relationships and make you more effective at work.
• "Active listening" is one way to listen better, by making a conscious effort to engage fully with what someone's saying, and to understand what they really mean.
• Five steps to active listening are: paying attention; showing that you're listening; providing feedback; deferring judgment; and responding appropriately.

Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. How well you listen has a major impact on your job effectiveness and on the quality of your relationships with other people.

For instance:

• We listen to obtain information.
• We listen to understand.
• We listen for enjoyment.
• We listen to learn.

Given all the listening that we do, you would think we'd be good at it! In fact, most of us are not, and research suggests that we only remember between 25 percent and 50 percent of what we hear, as described by Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience. [1]

That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers, or spouse for 10 minutes, they pay attention to less than half of the conversation.

Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren't hearing the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in your 25-50 percent, but what if they're not?

Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving.

Good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness . Understanding your own personal style of communicating will go a long way toward helping you to create good and lasting impressions with others.

What Is Active Listening?

The way to improve your listening skills is to practice "active listening." This is where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, the complete message being communicated.

In order to do this, you must pay attention to the other person very carefully. You cannot allow yourself to become distracted by whatever else may be going on around you, or by forming counterarguments while the other person is still speaking. Nor can you allow yourself to get bored, and lose focus on what the other person is saying.

If you're finding it particularly difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying, try repeating their words mentally as they say them. This will reinforce their message and help you to stay focused.

To enhance your listening skills, you need to let the other person know that you are listening to what they're saying.

Acknowledgment can be something as simple as a nod of the head or a simple "uh huh." You aren't necessarily agreeing with the person, you are simply indicating that you are listening. Using body language and other signs to acknowledge you are listening can also help you to pay attention.

Try to respond to the speaker in a way that will encourage them to continue speaking, so that you can get the information that you need. While nodding and "uh huhing" says you're interested, an occasional question or comment to recap what has been said also communicates that you are listening and understanding the message.

The Benefits of Active Listening

To understand the importance of active listening, ask yourself if you've ever had a conversation when you wondered if the other person was listening to what you were saying. You wonder if your message is getting across, or if it's even worthwhile continuing to speak. It feels like talking to a brick wall and it's something you want to avoid.

By becoming a better listener, you can improve your productivity and your ability to influence, persuade, and negotiate. What's more, you'll avoid conflict and misunderstandings. All of these are necessary for workplace success!

Be aware that active listening can give others the impression that you agree with them even if you don't. It’s also important to avoid using active listening as a checklist of actions to follow, rather than really listening. It may help to practice Mindful Listening if you find that you lose focus regularly.

Top Tips for Active Listening

There are five key active listening techniques you can use to help you become a more effective listener:

1. Pay Attention

Give the speaker your undivided attention, and acknowledge the message. Recognize that non-verbal communication also "speaks" loudly.

• Look at the speaker directly.
• Put aside distracting thoughts.
• Don't mentally prepare a rebuttal!
• Avoid being distracted by environmental factors. For example, side conversations.
• "Listen" to the speaker's body language .

2. Show That You're Listening

Use your own body language and gestures to show that you are engaged.

• Nod occasionally.
• Smile and use other facial expressions.
• Make sure that your posture is open and interested.
• Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like yes, and "uh huh."

3. Provide Feedback

Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. As a listener, your role is to understand what is being said. This may require you to reflect on what is being said and to ask questions.

• Reflect on what has been said by paraphrasing. "What I'm hearing is... ," and "Sounds like you are saying... ," are great ways to reflect back.
• Ask questions to clarify certain points. "What do you mean when you say... ." "Is this what you mean?"
• Summarize the speaker's comments periodically.

If you find yourself responding emotionally to what someone says, say so. And ask for more information: "I may not be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said personally. What I thought you just said is XXX. Is that what you meant?"

4. Defer Judgment

Interrupting is a waste of time. It frustrates the speaker and limits full understanding of the message.

• Allow the speaker to finish each point before asking questions.
• Don't interrupt with counterarguments.

5. Respond Appropriately

Active listening is designed to encourage respect and understanding. You are gaining information and perspective. You add nothing by attacking the speaker or otherwise putting them down.

• Be candid, open, and honest in your response.
• Assert your opinions respectfully.
• Treat the other person in a way that you think they would want to be treated.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are active listening skills.

Active listening skills include paying attention to what someone else is saying, showing that you're listening, giving feedback, refraining from judgment, and responding respectfully.

Why Is Active Listening Important in Communication?

Active listening helps you to avoid conflict and misunderstandings. It can positively impact your productivity and relationships. It's important for people to feel listened to when they're talking, and active listening ensures that this happens!

Is Active Listening Innate or Is It a Skill You Can Learn?

Active listening is a skill that you can learn and practice. As a first step, try out our tips in your next conversation.

Listening Skills Infographic

See Active Listening represented in our infographic: Listening Skills .

It takes a lot of concentration and determination to be an active listener. Old habits are hard to break, and if your listening skills are as bad as many people's are, then you'll need to do a lot of work to break these bad habits.

There are five key techniques you can use to develop your active listening skills:

• Pay attention.
• Show that you're listening.
• Provide feedback.
• Defer judgment.
• Respond appropriately.

Start using active listening techniques today to become a better communicator, improve your workplace productivity, and develop better relationships.

[1] Dale, E. (1947). "Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching," New York: The Dryden Press.

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Emma Robert

strong listening skills are invaluable in both personal and professional contexts. They facilitate effective communication, foster understanding, and build stronger relationships. By actively listening, we demonstrate respect, empathy, and a willingness to truly comprehend others' perspectives. Developing and honing our listening skills can enhance our ability to collaborate, problem-solve, and connect with others on a deeper level. It is an ongoing process that requires practice, patience, and a commitment to continuous improvement. By prioritizing and cultivating our listening skills, we can become better communicators and contribute to more meaningful and fulfilling interactions in all aspects of our lives. It's crucial for students to prioritize self-care, seek support from university resources or counselling services, and maintain open communication with loved ones. Contact https://cosmoconsultants.in for stress-free study abroad process

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How to Become a Better Listener

• Robin Abrahams
• Boris Groysberg

Sharpen these seven skills.

Listening is a skill that’s vitally important, sadly undertaught, and physically and mentally taxing. In the aftermath of Covid-19, particularly with the shift to remote work and the red-hot job market, it’s never been more important — or more difficult — for leaders to be good listeners. This article offers nine tips to help leaders become more active listeners, and a breakdown of the subskills involved in listening and how you can improve in them.

It’s never been more important — or more difficult — for leaders to 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. Employers who fail to listen and thoughtfully respond to their people’s concerns will see greater turnover. And given that the highest rates of turnover are among top performers who can take clients and projects with them, and the frontline employees responsible for the customer experience, the risk is clear.

• Robin Abrahams is a research associate at Harvard Business School.
• BG Boris Groysberg is a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate at the school’s Race, Gender & Equity Initiative. He is the coauthor, with Colleen Ammerman, of Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). bgroysberg

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Five essential listening skills for english learners, by raphael ahmed, 18 june 2015 - 16:08.

Jamie Johnson for British Council 

How can learners improve their listening comprehension? Teacher Raphael Ahmed shares some useful strategies in one of our top five articles of all time, illustrated by artist Jamie Johnson.

Why listening is important

It should not be difficult to realise the importance of listening when we consider that it occupies about  45 per cent  of the time adults spend in communication. This is significantly more than speaking, which accounts for 30 per cent, and reading and writing, which make up 16 per cent and nine per cent respectively.

Yet, for all its importance, students (and even teachers) often fail to give listening the attention it needs. This is all the more remarkable as learners often say that listening is the most challenging of all the skills in English.

Listening challenges for English language learners

There are many difficulties an individual may face in understanding a talk, lecture or conversation in a second language (and sometimes even in their first language). The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties.

Contributing factors include the speaker talking quickly, background noise, a lack of visual clues (such as on the telephone), the listener’s limited vocabulary, a lack of knowledge of the topic, and an inability to distinguish individual sounds.

While the challenges posed by the speaker or the situation may be out of the listener’s hands, there are a few skills or 'strategies' that English learners can use to help them along.

1. Predicting content

Imagine you've just turned on your TV. You see a man in a suit standing in front of a large map with the symbols of a sun, clouds and thunder. What do you imagine he is about to tell you? Most likely, this is going to be a weather forecast. You can expect to hear words like 'sunny', 'windy' and 'overcast'. You'll probably hear the use of the future tense: 'It'll be a cold start to the day'; 'there'll be showers in the afternoon', etc.

Depending on the context – a news report, a university lecture, an exchange in a supermarket – you can often predict the kind of words and style of language the speaker will use. Our knowledge of the world helps us anticipate the kind of information we are likely to hear. Moreover, when we predict the topic of a talk or a conversation, all the related vocabulary stored in our brains is 'activated' to help us better understand what we're listening to.

Practise predicting content:

Watch or listen to a recorded TV programme or clip from YouTube. Pause after every few sentences. Try to predict what is going to happen or what the speaker might say next.

If you are taking a listening test, skim through the questions first and try to predict what kind of information you need to listen out for. A question beginning 'How many..?', for example, will probably require you to listen for a specific number or quantity of something.

2. Listening for gist

Imagine you are a superhero flying in the sky. From that height, it is possible to see what the entire area is like, how densely populated it is, the kind of houses in each area.

When listening, it is also possible to get the ‘whole picture’ but with one crucial difference: information comes in a sequence. And in that sequence of information, there are  content words  (the nouns, adjectives and verbs) that can help you form that picture. We often call this listening for gist.

For example, the words 'food', 'friends', 'fun', 'park' and 'sunny day' have their own meanings, but when you hear the words in sequence, they help form the context of a picnic.

Practise listening for gist:

Find a short video with subtitles on a topic that interests you. Use the title to help you predict the content and then listen out for the  content words . Go back, and listen again with the subtitles. How much did you understand the first time? Return to the video a week later and try again.

When you learn new words, try to group them with other words used in a similar context.  Mind maps  are good for this.

3. Detecting signposts

Just like the traffic lights on roads, there are signposts in language that help us follow what we're listening to. These words, which link ideas, help us to understand what the speaker is talking about and where they are taking us. They're particularly important in presentations and lectures.

For example, if a university lecturer says: 'I am going to talk about three factors affecting global warming…' then later on you might hear the phrases 'first of all', 'moving on to' and 'in summary' to indicate the next part of the talk. Other words and phrases can function in a similar way. For instance, to clarify ('in other words', 'to put it another way'); to give examples ('to illustrate this', 'for example'), and so on. Take a look at this  list of phrases  for more examples.

Practise detecting signpost language:

Most course books for learners of English come with a CD and audio script. Find an example of a business presentation or lecture and see how many signpost phrases you can identify (listen more than once, if necessary). Then check your notes with the audio script.

In your notebook, group signpost phrases according to their functions, and continue to add new expressions as you come across them.

4. Listening for details

Imagine you are a detective taking a closer look at those buildings you saw earlier on as a superhero. This time, rather than taking in the big picture, you're looking for something specific and rejecting anything that does not match what's on your list.

Similarly, when listening for details, you are interested in a specific kind of information – perhaps a number, name or object. You can ignore anything that does not sound relevant. In this way, you are able to narrow down your search and get the detail you need.

In a listening test, if you are asked to write down the age of a person, listen for the words related to age ('old', 'young', 'years', 'date of birth', etc.) or a number that could represent that person's age. If it is a conversation, you might wait to hear someone beginning a question with 'How old…?'

Practise listening for details:

Decide on a type of detailed information you want to practise listening for and watch programmes where you would expect to get that information. For example, you could listen to a weather report to get details about the weather, or you could follow the sports news to find out the latest results.

If you are taking a test, as soon as you get the question paper, skim through the questions, underline the important words and decide what kind of detail you need to identify in the listening text.

5. Inferring meaning

Imagine you are a tourist in a country whose language you do not speak. In a restaurant, you hand over a credit card to pay for the bill, but the server seems to say something apologetic in response. Even though you don't understand his words, you can probably conclude that the restaurant doesn't take credit cards, and you need to pay with cash instead.

This is the technique of inferring meaning: using clues and prior knowledge about a situation to work out the meaning of what we hear.

Similarly, we can infer the relationship between people from the words they use, without having to find out directly. Take the following conversation:

A: Tom, did you do your homework? B: I did, sir, but the dog ate it. A: That's a terrible excuse. You'll never pass your exams if you don't work harder.

We can infer from the use of the words 'homework' and 'exams' that this is a conversation between a student and his teacher. By using contextual clues and our knowledge of the world, we can work out what's being said, who is speaking and what's taking place.

Practise inferring meaning:

Find a YouTube clip from a popular television show, for example  Friends . Now, rather than watch it, just listen to the dialogue. How much can you infer about what is taking place, who is talking and what their relationship is? Now listen to the clip a second time but watch it too. Were your conclusions correct?

The next time you hear a word you don't understand, try to guess its meaning using the context or situation to help you. But don't worry if you don't get it the first time. As with everything in life, the more you practise, the better you will get.

These strategies are not stand-alone. While prediction is mostly a pre-listening skill, others need to be used simultaneously to get the best result when listening.

Teachers, visit our  TeachingEnglish  website for more lesson plans and activities, and find out how you can become a  TeachingEnglish blogger .

This article is one of our top five most-read of all time. 

Raphael Ahmed is still a teacher of English, and currently interested in AI and its implications on assessment. He got into teaching English in 2011, to make himself more internationally mobile; he heard that he could ‘go places’ if he did the Cambridge CELTA. Apart from learning, teaching and travelling, he’s interested in woodworking, painting, cooking, writing and coding.

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EFFECTIVE LISTENING SKILLS

Jul 27, 2014

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Communication Skills. EFFECTIVE LISTENING SKILLS. Barriers to effective communication. Comfort of the language Lacking clarity Using stereotypes and generalizations Jumping to conclusions Using disconfirming responses Lacking confidence Lack of listening Skills . What is Listening?.

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• particular point
• demonstrating interest
• positive body posture
• mutual understanding
• sad emotions

Presentation Transcript

Communication Skills EFFECTIVE LISTENING SKILLS

Barriers to effective communication • Comfort of the language • Lacking clarity • Using stereotypes and generalizations • Jumping to conclusions • Using disconfirming responses • Lacking confidence • Lack of listening Skills

What is Listening? • To hear something with thoughtful attention : give consideration "We were given two ears but only one mouth, because listening is twice as hard as talking."

What is Listening?

Communication Skills Objective • to receive information • to understand effectively • to enhance clarity • to empathize Objective of Listening is…

Why Listen? • to receive information • to understand effectively • to enhance clarity • to empathize www.firstpersonality.com

Importance of Listening Communication Skills Listening – why is it important? Listening 45% Speaking 30% Order in which we are taught Order in which we learn Reading 16% Writing 9%

Types of Listening Active listening. You listen closely to content and intent. What emotional meaning might the speaker be giving you? You try to block out barriers to listening. Most importantly, you are non-judgmental and empathetic.

Types of Listening Passive listening (Inactive listening). The definition of this is the old adage, “In one ear and out the other.” You hear the words, but your mind is wandering and no communication is taking place.

Types of Listening Selective listening. You hear only what you want to hear. You hear some of the message and immediately begin to formulate your reply or second guess the speaker without waiting for the speaker to finish.

Types of Listening Reflective Listening. This is active listening when you also work to clarify what the speaker is saying and make sure there is mutual understanding.

Types of Listening Empathetic Listening: Listening something with empathy is known as empathetic listening. Empathy refers to emotions. Eg: Listening to a sad event, we need to listen with sad emotions

Hearing Vs. Listening!

Differences Hearing is like breathing, it is automatic. It is physical Effective Listening is a skill which can be achieved only through Practice. It is intellectual.

Hearing Vs Listening • Listening is a conscious act • Listening involves hearing, receiving, comprehending and responding appropriately • Hearing is an involuntary, physical and biological act • There is no understanding or appropriate response

4 Types of Listeners • The Non-Listener HEARING • The Marginal Listener V/s • The Evaluative Listener • The Active Listener LISTENING

Advantages of Listening • Good Listening leads to positive attitude, cordial relations and better participation. • It helps us to understand the customer better • Helps you to build rapport with the customer and thus gain his confidence • It increases productivity • Provides valuable information for the purpose of decision-making.

Communication Skills What Good Listening Looks like... • The Listener keeps looking at the speaker • The Listener’s body is in ‘open’ position • The listener is smiling with a pleasant & encouraging expression • Listener looks relaxed but alert, neither tense nor slouching • Listener utters humming sounds

3 Skills for Good Listening • There are 3 levels to listening: • Attending skills • Following skills • Reflecting skills

Attending Skills Positive body posture Establishing eye contact Moving in response to the speaker Nodding and making receptive verbal signals.

Following Skills Demonstrating Interest Comments such as-”Really, I see……” Asking open-ended questions

Reflecting Skills Rephrasing what the speaker has said Reflecting emotions Reflecting implications LISTEN!! FOR THE WORDS AND THE EMOTIONS

Do we always Listen? If No, Then….. Why not?

5 Reasons why we don’t listen • Listening is hard work • Competition for our attention • Fast pace of Life • Speed differences in the rate of speaking and understanding. • Lack of training

Barriers to Listening • Noise • Physical Environment • Accent / Delivery of the Speaker • Assumptions • Self Esteem • Prejudices • Perception • Preoccupation • Lack of feedback • Questions • Paraphrasing

Qualities of a Good Listener • The Listener keeps looking at the speaker • The Listener’s body is in ‘open’ position • The Listener is smiling with a pleasant & encouraging expression • Listener looks relaxed but alert, neither tense nor slouching • Listener utters humming sounds www.firstpersonality.com

Tips to Good Listening • Listen carefully. Helps you to: • Understand • Comprehend • Evaluate • Careful listening will require a conscious effort on your part. • You must be aware of the verbal and nonverbal messages (reading between the lines). • Be mentally and physically prepared to listen.

Tips to Good Listening • You can't hear if YOU do all the talking. Don't talk too much. • Listen with empathy. • Be courteous; don't interrupt. Take notes if you worry about forgetting a particular point. • Avoid stereotyping individuals by making assumptions about how you expect them to act. This will bias your listening.

Tips to Good Listening • Listen to how something is said. Be alert for the emotions behind the words. • Listen without thinking about how you're going to respond • Make certain you give the customer to an opportunity to voice their opinions. Don't dominate the conversation. • Maintain good body posture

Final Tips to Good Listening • Maintain eye contact with the instructor • Focus on content than on the way that it is being said. • Avoid selective listening • Avoid distractions • Ask questions to stay active and interested. • Face the speaker • Maintain eye contact • Respond appropriately – say yes, nod, etc. • Do not be preoccupied with your own thoughts.

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Active Listening Skills, Examples and Exercises

September 20, 2017 - Sophie Thompson

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.

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.

In this article, we’ll cover the following:

Why is listening important?

Benefits of active listening, what makes a good listener.

• Verbal and non-verbal signs of active listening

Four different listening styles

Examples of active listening, barriers to effective listening.

• Tips to becoming an effective listener
• Listening exercises

Listening is the most fundamental component of communication skills. Listening is not something that just happens, listening is an active process in which a conscious decision is made to listen to and understand the messages of the speaker.

Active listening is also about patience, listeners should not interrupt with questions or comments. Active listening involves giving the other person time to explore their thoughts and feelings, they should be given adequate time for that.

We spend a lot of time listening

Various studies stress the  importance of listening  as a communication skill. The studies on average say we spend 70-80% of our waking hours in some form of communication. Of that time, we spend about 9 percent writing, 16 percent reading, 30 percent speaking, and 45 percent listening.

Studies also confirm that most of us are poor and inefficient listeners. Most of us are not very good at listening, research suggests that we remember less than 50% of what we hear in a conversation.

There are many important benefits of active listening, these include:

• 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 realise 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Increases competence and knowledge  – Great listening skills make an employee more competent and capable, regardless of their position. The more an individual can get information out of the meetings, the instructions, and reports provided to him, the more efficient and successful they will be at completing the task. Listening also builds knowledge and helps fulfil work requirements through progressive learning.
• Saves time and money  – Effective listening not only reduces risks of misunderstanding and mistakes that could be very damaging to the business, but it also saves time and money by avoiding starting a task or a project over again, just because the directives given were misunderstood. Employees do not waste precious time and a specific budget allocated to a project.
• Helps detect and solve problems  – As a leader, they should always be attentive to what employees have to say. In the workplace, they are the first ones to spot flaws and come up with suggestions for improvements. Listening to colleagues will help you understand what needs to be changed and worked on to retain talent and make improvements.

Good listeners actively endeavour to understand what others are really trying to say, regardless of how unclear the messages might be. Listening involves not only the effort to decode verbal messages, but also to interpret non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and physical posture.

Effective listeners make sure to let others know that they have been heard, and encourage them to share their thoughts and feelings fully.

You also need to show to the person speaking that you’re listening through non-verbal cues, such as maintaining eye contact, nodding your head and smiling, agreeing by saying ‘Yes’. By providing this feedback the person speaking will usually feel more at ease and communicates more easily, openly and honestly.

Listening vs. hearing

Hearing is an accidental and automatic brain response to sound that requires no effort. We are surrounded by sounds most of the time. For example, we are accustomed to the sounds of cars, construction workers and so on. We hear those sounds and, unless we have a reason to do otherwise, we  learn to ignore them .

Hearing is:

• Involuntary

Listening, on the other hand, is purposeful and focused rather than accidental. As a result, it requires motivation and effort. Listening, at its best, is active, focused, concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a speaker.

Listening means paying attention not only to the story, but how it is told, the use of language and voice, and how the other person uses his or her body. In other words, it means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages. Your ability to listen effectively depends on the degree to which you perceive and understand these messages.

Listening is:

• Intentional

Practice Active Listening

Practice your listening skills with exercises and audio recordings, then answer quiz questions to evaluate your listening skills. Learn More

Verbal and non-verbal signs of active listening skills

It’s a horrible feeling talking to someone and realising that they are not really listening. There are some simple steps you can take to let the speaker know you are actively listening, such as asking relevant questions,  positive body language , nodding and maintaining eye contact.

Non-verbal signs of active listening

The people are listening are likely to display at least some of these signs. However, these signs may not be appropriate in all situations and  across all cultures .

• 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 happy about the messages being received. Combined with nods of the head, smiles can be powerful in affirming that messages are being listened to and understood.
• Eye Contact  – it is normal and usually encouraging for the listener to look at the speaker. Eye contact can however be intimidating, especially for more shy speakers – gauge how much eye contact is appropriate for any given situation. Combine eye contact with smiles and other non-verbal 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 whilst sitting. Other signs of active listening may include a slight slant of the head or resting the head on one hand.
• Distraction  – the active listener will not be distracted and therefore will refrain from fidgeting, looking at a clock or watch, doodling, playing with their hair or picking their fingernails.

Verbal Signs of active listening

• Positive Reinforcement  – this can be a strong signal of attentiveness, however too much use can be annoying for the speaker. Occasional words and phrases, such as: ‘very good’, ‘yes’ or ‘indeed’ will indicate that you are paying attention.
• Remembering  – try to remember a few key points, such as the name of the speaker. It can help to reinforce that what is being said has been understood. Remembering details, ideas and concepts from previous conversations proves that attention was kept and is likely to encourage the speaker to continue.
• Questioning  – the listener can demonstrate that they have been paying attention by  asking relevant questions  and/or making statements that build or help to clarify what the speaker has said. By asking relevant questions the listener also helps to reinforce that they have an interest in what the speaker has been saying.
• Clarification  – this involves asking questions of the speaker to ensure that the correct message has been received. Clarification usually involves the use of open questions which enables the speaker to expand on certain points as necessary.

If listening were easy, and if all people went about it in the same way, the task for a public speaker would be much easier.

1. People oriented

The people-oriented listener is interested in the speaker. They listen to the message in order to learn how the speaker thinks and how they feel about their message. For instance, when people-oriented listeners listen to an interview with a famous musician, they are likely to be more curious about the musician as an individual than about music.

2. Action or task oriented

Action-oriented listeners are primarily interested in finding out what the speaker wants. Does the speaker want votes, donations, volunteers, or something else? It’s sometimes difficult for an action-oriented speaker to 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.

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.

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.

To learn more about listening styles, read  The Importance of Listening – Listening Styles

Here are  some examples  of statements and questions used with active listening:

• Paraphrasing  – “So, you want us to build the new school in the style of the old one?”
• Brief verbal affirmation  – “I appreciate the time you’ve taken to speak to me”
• Asking open-ended questions  – “I understand you aren’t happy with your new car. What changes can we make to it?”
• Asking specific questions  – “How many employees did you take on last year?”
• Mentioning similar situations  – “I was in a similar situation after my previous company made me redundant.”
• Summarise questions  – A job candidate who summarises their understanding of an unclear question during an interview.
• Notice people speaking  – A meeting facilitator encouraging a quiet team member to share their views about a project.
• Summarise group conversations  – A manager summarizing what has been said at a meeting and checking with the others that it is correct.

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:

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 encounter in public speaking situations are: physical noise, psychological noise, physiological noise, and semantic noise.

2. Attention Span

A person can only maintain focused attention for a  finite length of time . Many people argued that modern audiences have lost the ability to sustain attention to a message. Whether or not these concerns are well founded, you have probably noticed that even when your attention is glued to something in which you are deeply interested, every now and then you pause to do something else, such as getting a drink.

3. Receiver Biases

Good listening involves keeping an open mind and withholding judgment until the speaker has completed the message. Conversely, biased listening is characterized by jumping to conclusions; the biased listener believes, “I don’t need to listen because I already know this.” Receiver 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 listeners hold them in check while listening.

4. Listening Apprehension

This is the fear that you might be unable to understand the message or process the information correctly or be able to adapt your thinking to include the new information coherently. In some situations, you might worry that the information presented will be too complex for you to understand fully.

Tips to become an effective listener and improve active listening skills

Tips to help you develop effective listening skills.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…”

Ask questions and summarise to ensure understanding

When the person speaking has finished talking, ask questions relevant to what they are saying – try not to lead people in directions that have nothing to do with where they thought they were going. Sometimes we work our way back to the original topic, but very often we don’t.

You can also summarise the conversation to make sure you understand all the person is trying to say – this works well at networking events at the end of conversations, it also gives you an excuse to move onto another conversation.

Try to feel what the speaker is feeling

Empathy is the heart and soul of good listening. To  experience empathy , you have to put yourself in the other person’s place and allow yourself to feel what it is like to be her at that moment. This is not an easy thing to do. It takes energy and concentration. But it is a generous and helpful thing to do, and it facilitates communication like nothing else does.

Give the speaker regular feedback

Show that you understand where the speaker is coming from by reflecting the speaker’s feelings. If the speaker’s feelings are hidden or unclear, then occasionally paraphrase the content of the message. Or just nod and show your understanding through appropriate facial expressions and an occasional well-timed “uh huh.”

Pay attention to non-verbal cues

The majority of face-to-face communication is non-verbal. We get a great deal of information about each other without saying a word. When face to face with a person, you can detect enthusiasm, boredom, or irritation very quickly in the expression around the eyes, the set of the mouth, the slope of the shoulders. These are clues you can’t ignore. When listening, remember that words convey only a fraction of the message.

To read these listening tips in more detail, visit  10 Steps To Effective Listening

Listening skills exercises

Online exercises.

Practice your listening skills with interactive exercises.

• Active listening course with online practice

Summarise the conversation exercise

For a week, try concluding every conversation in which information is exchanged with a summary. In conversations that result in agreements about future activities, summarising will ensure accurate follow-through.

How to Practice Active Listening: 16 Examples & Techniques

Do you wonder if you could be better?

Good listeners can stay present and engaged with what is being said. This article will describe a listening technique called active listening. It’s useful in building therapeutic relationships and creating empathy.

You will learn the benefits of active listening and how it makes you a better communicator. And we will provide a list of the skills needed and techniques to learn exactly how to practice this. Finally, we’ll go over common pitfalls that keep us from being good listeners.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free . These science-based tools will help you and those you work with build better social skills and better connect with others.

This Article Contains:

What is active listening 3 principles, is it important in communication 4 benefits, active listening skills you can foster, 7 techniques to train your active listening skills, 3 counseling exercises & activities, 3 worksheets to practice active listening, questions to ask others: 3 examples, possible barriers & psychology tips to overcome them, 3 courses for training on effective communication, resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

Often, while we are listening, we are thinking of how we will respond. We might get distracted and miss some of what was said. We may not be paying much attention to the nonverbal communication cues of the speaker.

Active listening requires the listener to pay close attention to what is being communicated verbally and nonverbally. The listener is encouraged to interpret not only the content of what is being said, but also the emotions present and the body language.

In order to achieve this, the listener must be willing to devote energy to the task. They will need to have an excellent attention span and honed empathic abilities . Active listening has even been referred to as the “measurable dimension of empathy” (Olson & Iwasiw, 1987, p. 104).

There are three main components of successful active listening (Rogers & Farson, 1987):

• Listen for total meaning When someone is conveying a message, there are two meanings to gather: the content and the feeling or attitude underlying the message. An active listener is not only tuned in to the information conveyed, but also how it is conveyed and any nonverbal cues present.
• Respond to feelings After listening, when a response is appropriate, the listener should respond to the feeling of what was said. In this way, the speaker feels understood and empathy is established.
• Note all cues Nonverbal cues include tone of voice, facial or body expressions, and speed of speech. All of these taken together can convey a much deeper meaning than merely the content of what was said.

Carl Rogers’s take on active listening

Psychologists Carl Rogers and Richard Farson (1987) are responsible for defining the concept of active listening. They describe the skill as vitally important for effective communication. For Rogers, the ultimate goal of active listening was to foster positive change (Rogers & Farson, 1987). This change can occur in the context of a client/helper relationship or in the context of a group.

Rogers described three important principles in effective counseling: empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard . Active listening is a tool that fosters and supports these principles.

Empathy is demonstrated in active listening by the listener reflecting the thoughts and feelings of the speaker. These thoughts and feelings are believed, supported, and respected. They are not dismissed or challenged.

Rogers stresses that in order to be successful in active listening, the listener must be authentic in their care. This reflects the principle of genuineness. Active listening can’t be faked.

Active listening requires true feelings of respect toward the individual speaking. The listener accepts and supports the speaker regardless of the content of their words. This illustrates the principle of unconditional positive regard.

It is also a skill that will benefit the listener in their life outside of work.

Whether at work or in casual conversation, active listening can provide a safe and empathetic space for a speaker, fostering feelings of trust.

Active listening in counseling

Active listening has been shown to be a vital skill in counseling. Empathy and empathic listening foster the therapeutic relationship , and the relationship between therapist and client has been shown to be the one of the most crucial and stable predictors of client success (Martin, Garske, & Davis, 2000).

Another benefit of learning active listening as a counselor is that it may increase self-efficacy . Levitt (2002) examined the impact of teaching active listening to counseling students and found that this skill created greater levels of confidence in the students and helped to reduce their anxiety as new counselors.

Active listening in the workplace

Kubota, Mishima, and Nagata (2004) examined the effects of an active listening training program on middle managers, finding positive results. In workplaces, a large portion of stress experienced by employees comes from interpersonal relationships.

The study showed that teaching managers who learned active listening skills were better able to support employees with mental health issues, providing a safe environment for them to share their difficulties without judgment. This led to calmer behaviors and more success (Kubota et al., 2004).

Can active listening skills even work through text conversations? Perhaps so. A unique and interesting study looked at the application of active listening to written communication online (Bauer & Figl, 2008). This case study was examining soft skills among computer science students and to see if active listening could come across in instant message conversations.

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Active listening requires a skill set that differs from typical everyday listening. Not only are you using the principles of empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard, but you must also develop certain skillful ways of interacting.

It’s useful to begin with the body language of the listener (Robertson, 2005). How do you know when someone is listening to you? Maintaining eye contact and appropriate facial expressions is important to convey empathy and attention. As with all aspects of active listening, these indicators shouldn’t be forced or faked. They are simply a reflection of your genuine attentiveness.

It also helps to remove distractions from the environment. Depending on the context, you may desire to set up an environment that conveys peace and quiet. If you are in a public place, putting away distractions or moving to a quieter location can also be helpful.

Another skill is following (Robertson, 2005). To actively follow what the speaker is conveying, you allow space for them to speak, reducing or eliminating questions and giving space for silence .

In a non-active listening situation, there may be quick back and forth, many rapid questions, or people may talk over one another. With active listening, the speaker is given the time and space to speak as much as they want. And they are encouraged to continue.

A third skill is reflecting (Robertson, 2005). This is the skill of repeating what you heard the speaker say, but avoiding parroting it back verbatim. You are trying to capture the essence of what they said and reflect it back to them. You may also try to capture the feelings that are conveyed.

This is always done without expressing judgment and with the goal of understanding. It may even be useful to ask if you have it right before asking them to continue.

Each technique is listed with an example and an explanation of the use.

Use the below suggestions to help your clients improve their listening.

Practicing with a partner

For counselors in training, it is important to practice active listening with a partner. One partner shares a story of something emotional that happened, and the listener will practice the following techniques:

• Demonstrating listening through body language and nonverbal responses
• Reflecting back the content of what the partner shared
• Reflecting back the emotions that the partner shared

It’s important to check in with your partner after you’ve reflected to be sure that it’s accurate.

Mindful listening group practice

In many ways, active listening is a mindfulness practice. The listener is trying to stay focused on the present, with what is being shared. And they are working to accomplish this without judgment.

Here is an excellent activity to practice mindful listening in a group.

• Have the group sit in a circle.
• Offer an ice breaker question or prompt, such as something they are grateful for today.
• Rather than go around the circle, ask participants to share spontaneously when they feel ready.
• Invite them to notice if they are thinking about their answer, rather than listening.
• Ask them to be present with the person who is sharing.
• Challenge them to notice if they are uncomfortable with the silences.

Mindful listening alone

At any moment, you can drop in and practice mindful listening. Simply stop what you are doing, close your eyes, and try to see how many sounds you can hear around you and within you. Notice if there are judgments arising and try not to attach to them. Stay with the flow of sounds for as long as you can.

Listening Accurately

This worksheet offers a five-step process to improve your communication skills with another person. It would be a useful tool for working with couples or anyone who would like to hone their listening skills.

The five steps are:

• Step in their shoes.
• Fact-check your interpretation.
• Give your full attention.
• Clarify what they’ve said.
• Clarify what you’ve said.

500 Years Ago

This creative exercise helps both the listener and the speaker develop their empathy by imagining themselves in someone else’s place.

The listener is instructed to pretend that they have come from the past, 500 years ago. The speaker is trying to explain something to them and must use language that they can understand.

Using Small Rewards

In working to create a therapeutic alliance, nonverbal communication is key. This worksheet lists some “small rewards,” subtle but powerful nonverbal gestures that the therapist can use to let their client know that they hear them and are following along.

The worksheet invites the practitioner to listen to a five-minute segment of their session and see how often they were using these nonverbal cues. There is space to reflect on how better to incorporate them and consider why there may have been trouble.

How to actively listen to others – Scott Pierce

Active listening starts with refraining from questions. It’s important that the stage be set by allowing the speaker enough time and space to speak.

Start with reflection

Begin with reflections and try to capture the feeling of what was said. A reflection mirrors back what the person just said and tries to capture the meaning or the tone.

For example, let’s say a friend comes to you about a fight she had with her husband. She describes how the argument got heated, and they ended up sleeping separately. She is feeling worried about the state of their marriage.

A reflection restates what she said: “Things got really heated last night – so bad you didn’t even want to be in the same room.” Or “You’re feeling really worried because this fight felt so intense.”

The first example is a reflection of the content of what was shared. The second reflects the emotions. These types of reflections validate the speaker and help them feel heard and understood.

Asking questions

Only after reflection has been done will it be time to ask questions. The types of questions are important. The purpose of questions during active listening is to continue to move the individual toward self-discovery.

Open questions are vital for this step. Open questions can’t be answered with a simple yes or no. They invite introspection. Powerful questions stimulate curiosity in the listener and encourage conversation. They reveal underlying assumptions and invite creativity. They don’t change the subject or close down the conversation.

The point of an open-ended question as part of active listening is to learn more and continue to connect with the speaker. It is not to drive the conversation in a particular direction.

Here are three examples of closed questions vs open questions to ask, given the above situation. Remember, your friend just told you about a terrible fight that she had with her husband, and she is upset.

Closed question: “Did you make up?” Open question: “How are you feeling about the fight today?”

Closed question: “Did your kids hear you?” Open question: “How does it feel to share this with me? Have you thought about talking to anyone else?”

Closed question: “Are you going to leave him?” Open question: “What sorts of responses or solutions are you considering?”

You can see that the open questions invite conversation and show compassion , whereas the closed questions seem more like information gathering.

When practicing active listening, practitioners should also self-monitor for judgments that might come up while the person is speaking.

If these judgments aren’t monitored, they may cause criticizing, labeling, diagnosing, or even praising in a way that leads the speaker (Robertson, 2005).

The goal of active listening is to create a safe environment for the individual to speak freely. Any of these responses may lead to defensiveness, distrust, or shutting down.

Another barrier is suggesting solutions (Robertson, 2005). Although it may seem well meaning, the urge to suggest solutions often comes from a discomfort with what the speaker is saying. While it may seem supportive, it creates an imbalance of power in the dynamic. The speaker is left feeling unheard, and they are disempowered to create their own solutions.

A third barrier is avoiding what the person is sharing. This may manifest as diverting the conversation away, logically arguing, or even reassuring. Again, while reassurance seems comforting, it often shuts down or ends the conversation for the other person.

A wonderful example of the comparison of empathetic and other responses can be found in Brené Brown’s video below about sympathy versus empathy.

Active listening is a straightforward skill, and taking a short course is the perfect way to learn how to do it effectively. While it is possible to learn it simply by reading, it’s always helpful to see it in action and practice with other people.

If you are hoping to learn active listening to improve your workplace as a manager or a leader, these courses would be great for you.

Udemy offers thousands of short courses on everything from programming to cooking, and this course on active listening has over 10,000 downloads.

LinkedIn Learning offers courses for businesses, including one on effective listening . Your team can take a listening assessment, address challenges that they have, and learn effective listening behaviors.

A wonderful course for in-depth active listening training is offered by Voice of Health (VOH). VOH is an online peer-support community that offers free training for anyone interested.

World’s Largest Positive Psychology Resource

The Positive Psychology Toolkit© is a groundbreaking practitioner resource containing over 500 science-based exercises , activities, interventions, questionnaires, and assessments created by experts using the latest positive psychology research.

Updated monthly. 100% Science-based.

“The best positive psychology resource out there!” — Emiliya Zhivotovskaya , Flourishing Center CEO

Our Positive Psychology Toolkit© has excellent resources for learning how to listen more effectively and empathetically. One such tool is the exercise Listening Without Trying to Solve .

This exercise is done with a group. Individuals are paired off with one person as the listener and one as the storyteller. Each listener is given a card with instructions, half are told to listen without trying to solve and half are told to try to solve the problem as best as they can. Each pair is given five minutes for the storyteller to share a problem.

After sharing, the group returns together and discusses how it felt to be on the receiving end of a person who is working hard to solve the problem vs someone who is fully listening and empathizing. This is a powerful activity to show the effectiveness of active listening.

This checklist is a helpful tool for practicing active listening techniques. The checklist lists the techniques and then asks the listener to check back to see if they successfully used each one. There is space to write what worked well, what was difficult, and how to better incorporate unused techniques.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others communicate better, this collection contains 17 validated positive communication tools for practitioners. Use them to help others improve their communication skills and form deeper and more positive relationships.

Active listening is a skill that anyone can learn. It’s a vital tool for therapists and counselors to connect empathically with their clients. But it’s also useful for better communication with family, friends, and coworkers.

Practicing active listening can deepen connections in your relationships and help to create stronger and more lasting bonds. Try some of these exercises to improve your communication skills today.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free .

• Bauer, C., & Figl, K. (2008). ‘Active listening’ in written online communication-a case study in a course on ‘soft skills’ for computer scientists. In 2008 38th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference (pp. F2C–1). IEEE.
• Kubota, S., Mishima, N., & Nagata, S. (2004). A study of the effects of active listening on listening attitudes of middle managers. Journal of Occupational Health , 46 (1), 60–67.
• Levitt, D. H. (2002). Active listening and counselor self-efficacy: Emphasis on one microskill in beginning counselor training. The Clinical Supervisor , 20 (2), 101–115.
• Martin, D. J., Garske, J. P., & Davis, M. K. (2000). Relation of the therapeutic alliance with outcome and other variables: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , 68 (3), 438–450.
• Olson, J. K., & Iwasiw, C. L. (1987). Effects of a training model on active listening skills of post-RN students. Journal of Nursing Education , 26 (3), 104–107.
• Robertson, K. (2005). Active listening: More than just paying attention. Australian Family Physician , 34 (12), 1053–1055.
• Rogers, C. R., & Farson, R. E. (1987). Active listening. In R. G. Newman, M. A. Danziger, & M. Cohen (Eds.), Communicating in business today . DC Heath & Company.

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Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process.

Listening is key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.

If there is one communication skill you should aim to master, then listening is it.

Listening is so important that many top employers provide listening skills training for their employees. This is not surprising when you consider that good listening skills can lead to better customer satisfaction, greater productivity with fewer mistakes, and increased sharing of information that in turn can lead to more creative and innovative work.

Many successful leaders and entrepreneurs credit their success to effective listening skills. Richard Branson frequently quotes listening as one of the main factors behind the success of Virgin.

Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships.

Spend some time thinking about and developing your listening skills – they are the building blocks of success.

See our pages: Employability Skills and Customer Service Skills for more examples of the importance of listening in the workplace.

Good listening skills also have benefits in our personal lives, including:

A greater number of friends and social networks, improved self-esteem and confidence, higher grades at school and in academic work, and even better health and general well-being.

Studies have shown that, whereas speaking raises blood pressure, attentive listening can bring it down.

Listening is Not the Same as Hearing

Hearing refers to the sounds that enter your ears. It is a physical process that, provided you do not have any hearing problems, happens automatically.

Listening, however, requires more than that: it requires focus and concentrated effort, both mental and sometimes physical as well.  

Listening means paying attention not only to the story, but how it is told, the use of language and voice, and how the other person uses his or her body. In other words, it means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages. Your ability to listen effectively depends on the degree to which you perceive and understand these messages.

Listening is not a passive process. In fact, the listener can, and should, be at least as engaged in the process as the speaker. The phrase ‘ active listening ’ is used to describe this process of being fully involved.

See our pages: Active Listening and Types of Listening for more information.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen.  Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

We Spend a lot of Time Listening

Adults spend an average of 70% of their time engaged in some sort of communication.

Of this, research shows that an average of 45% is spent listening compared to 30% speaking, 16% reading and 9% writing. (Adler, R. et al. 2001). That is, by any standards, a lot of time listening. It is worthwhile, therefore, taking a bit of extra time to ensure that you listen effectively.

Based on the research of: Adler, R., Rosenfeld, L. and Proctor, R. (2001) Interplay: the process of interpersonal communicating (8th edn), Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt .

The Purpose of Listening

There is no doubt that effective listening is an extremely important life skill. Why is listening so important?

Listening serves a number of possible purposes, and the purpose of listening will depend on the situation and the nature of the communication.

To specifically focus on the messages being communicated, avoiding distractions and preconceptions.

To gain a full and accurate understanding into the speakers point of view and ideas.

To critically assess what is being said. (See our page on Critical Thinking for more).

To observe the non-verbal signals accompanying what is being said to enhance understanding.

To show interest, concern and concentration.

To encourage the speaker to communicate fully, openly and honestly.

To develop an selflessness approach, putting the speaker first.

To arrive at a shared and agreed understanding and acceptance of both sides views.

Often our main concern while listening is to formulate ways to respond. This is not a function of listening. We should try to focus fully on what is being said and how it's being said in order to more fully understand the speaker.

Effective listening requires concentration and the use of your other senses - not just hearing the words spoken.

Listening is not the same as hearing and in order to listen effectively you need to use more than just your ears.

See our page: The Ten Principles of Listening .

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To improve the process of effective listening, it can be helpful to turn the problem on its head and look at barriers to effective listening, or ineffective listening.

For example, one common problem is that instead of listening closely to what someone is saying, we often get distracted after a sentence or two and instead start to think about what we are going to say in reply or think about unrelated things. This means that we do not fully listen to the rest of the speaker’s message.

This problem is attributed, in part, to the difference between average speech rate and average processing rate. Average speech rates are between 125 and 175 words a minute whereas we can process on average between 400 and 800 words a minute. It is a common habit for the listener to use the spare time while listening to daydream or think about other things, rather than focusing on what the speaker is saying.

Of course the clarity of what the speaker is saying can also affect how well we listen. Generally we find it easier to focus if the speaker is fluent in their speech, has a familiar accent, and speaks at an appropriate loudness for the situation. It is more difficult, for example, to focus on somebody who is speaking very fast and very quietly, especially if they are conveying complex information.

We may also get distracted by the speaker’s personal appearance or by what someone else is saying, which sounds more interesting.

These issues not only affect you, but you are likely to show your lack of attention in your body language.

Generally, we find it much harder to control our body language, and you are likely to show your distraction and/or lack of interest by lack of eye contact, or posture. The speaker will detect the problem, and probably stop talking at best. At worse, they may be very offended or upset.

Our page on Barriers to Effective Listening explains more about common listening problems, and our page Listening Misconceptions details some of the common myths and misconceptions about listening.

Finally, it is important not to jump to conclusions about what you see and hear. You should always seek clarification to ensure that your understanding is correct.

See our pages: Clarification and Reflection for more information.

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7 Active Listening Techniques For Better Communication

It's time to start having more intentional conversations

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

• How to Improve

Active listening is a communication skill that involves going beyond simply hearing the words that another person speaks. It's about actively processing and seeking to understand the meaning and intent behind them. It requires being a mindful and focused participant in the communication process.

Active listening techniques include:

• Being fully present in the conversation
• Showing interest by practicing good eye contact
• Noticing (and using) non-verbal cues
• Asking open-ended questions to encourage further responses
• Paraphrasing and reflecting back what has been said
• Listening to understand rather than to respond
• Withholding judgment and advice

Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD explains, "Active listening requires de-centering from one’s fixed position to be fully present with another. It helps people feel more understood and strengthens relationships as it signals a willingness to sit with the other’s perspective and empathy for their situation instead of singular focus on oneself."

MStudioImages / Getty Images

In communication, active listening is important because it keeps you engaged with your conversation partner in a positive way. It also makes the other person feel heard and valued. This skill is the foundation of a successful conversation in any setting—whether at work, at home, or in social situations.

Romanoff continues, "Ultimately, it shows respect and value for the other person’s needs, concerns, and ideas as the listener is actively signaling the other person matters to them."

When you practice active listening, you are fully engaged and immersed in what the other person is saying.

7 Active Listening Techniques

The word "active" implies that you are taking some type of action when listening to others. This involves the use of certain strategies or techniques. Here are seven active listening techniques to consider.

1. Be Fully Present

Active listening requires being fully present in the conversation. This enables you to concentrate on what is being said. Being present involves listening with all your senses (sight, sound, etc.) and giving your full attention to the speaker.

"Being fully present involves the skill of tuning into the other person’s inner world while stepping away from your own. This is a power skill in deeply connecting and sitting with another’s emotions," says Romanoff.

To use this active listening technique effectively, put away your cell phone, ignore distractions, avoid daydreaming, and shut down your internal dialogue. Place your focus on your conversation partner and let everything else slip away.

2. Pay Attention to Non-Verbal Cues

As much as 65% of a person's communication is unspoken. Paying attention to these nonverbal cues can tell you a lot about the person and what they are trying to say. If they talk fast, for instance, this could be a sign that they are nervous or anxious. If they talk slowly, they may be tired or trying to carefully choose their words.

During active listening, your non-verbal behaviors are just as important. To show the person you're truly tuned in, use open, non-threatening body language. This involves not folding your arms, smiling while listening, leaning in, and nodding at key junctures.

It can also be helpful to pay attention to your facial expressions when active listening so that you don't convey any type of negative response.

3. Keep Good Eye Contact

When engaged in active listening, making eye contact is especially important. This tells the other person that you are present and listening to what they say. It also shows that you aren't distracted by anything else around you.

At the same time, you don't want to use so much eye contact that the conversation feels weird. To keep this from happening, follow the 50/70 rule. This involves maintaining eye contact for 50% to 70% of the time spent listening, holding the contact for four to five seconds before briefly looking away.

4. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Asking "yes or no" questions often produce dead-end answers. This isn't helpful during active listening as it keeps the conversation from flowing. It also makes it difficult to truly listen to the other person because there isn't much you can gain from a short, non-descriptive response.

Instead, ask open-ended questions to show that you are interested in the conversation and the other person. Examples of open-ended questions you may use when active listening include:

• Can you tell me a bit more about that?
• What did you think about that?
• What do you think is the best path moving forward?
• How do you think you could have responded differently?

The key to open-ended questions is to have a framework of curiosity about the other person. It signals genuine interest – making the other person feel valued and enables you to better understand them," adds Romanoff.

Open-ended questions encourage thoughtful, expansive responses, which is why they are often used by mental health therapists.

5. Reflect What You Hear

After the person has spoken, tell them what you heard. This active listening technique ensures that you've captured their thoughts, ideas, and/or emotions accurately. It also helps the other person feel validated and understood while keeping any potential miscommunications to a minimum.

One way to reflect what you've heard is to paraphrase. For example, you might say, "In other words, what you are saying is that you're frustrated" or "I'm hearing that you're frustrated about this situation." Summarize what you've heard and give the person the opportunity to say whether you've captured their meaning or intent.

If you'd like to better understand something the person has said, ask for clarification. But don't focus so much on insignificant details that you miss the big picture.

6, Be Patient

Patience is an important active listening technique because it allows the other person to speak without interruption. It also gives them the time to say what they are thinking without having to try to finish their sentences for them.

Being patient involves not trying to fill periods of silence with your own thoughts or stories. It also requires listening to understand, not to respond. That is, don't prepare a reply while the other person is still speaking. Also, don't change the subject too abruptly as this conveys boredom and impatience.

During active listening, you are there to act as a sounding board rather than to jump in with your own ideas and opinions about what is being said.

7, Withhold Judgment

Remaining neutral and non-judgmental in your responses enables the other person to feel comfortable with sharing their thoughts. It makes the conversation to a safe zone where they can trust that they won't be shamed, criticized, blamed, or otherwise negatively received.

Ways to be less judgmental when listening include:

• Expressing empathy for the person or their situation
• Learning more about different people and cultures
• Practicing acceptance of others
• Recognizing when you may be judging the other person, then stopping those thoughts

Active Listening Example

What does active listening look like? Here is an example of a conversation in which several different active listening techniques are used.

Lisa : I'm sorry to dump this on you, but I had a fight with my sister, and we haven't spoken since. I'm upset and don't know who to talk to.

Jodie : No problem! Tell me more about what happened. (open-ended question)

Lisa : Well, we were arguing about what to do for our parents' anniversary. I'm still so angry.

Jodie : Oh that's tough. You sound upset that you're not speaking because of it. (reflecting what was heard)

Lisa : Yes, she just makes me so angry. She assumed I would help her plan this elaborate party—I don't have time! It's like she couldn't see things from my perspective at all.

Jodie : Wow, that's too bad. How did that make you feel? (another open-ended question)

Lisa: Frustrated. Angry. Maybe a bit guilty that she had all these plans, and I was the one holding them back. Finally, I told her to do it without me. But that's not right, either.

Jodie : Sounds complicated. I bet you need some time to sort out how you feel about it. (withholding judgment)

Lisa : Yes, I guess I do. Thanks for listening—I just needed to vent.

Why Active Listening Is Important

Getting into the habit of active listening can have positive impacts in many key areas of your life. It can affect your relationships, your work, and your social interactions.

In Relationships

Active listening helps you better understand another person's point of view and respond with empathy. This is important in all types of healthy relationships , whether with a spouse, parent, child, another family member, or friend.

Being an active listener in your relationships involves recognizing that the conversation is more about the other person than about you. This is especially important when the other person is emotionally distressed.

Your ability to listen actively to a family member or friend who is going through a difficult time is a valuable communication skill. It helps keep you from offering opinions and solutions when the other person really just wants to be heard.

Active listening at work is particularly important if you are in a supervisory position or interact frequently with colleagues. It helps you understand problems and collaborate to develop solutions . It also showcases your patience, a valuable asset in the workplace.

In some cases, active listening while on the job can help improve workplace safety. For instance, if you are in the healthcare field, engaging in active listening can help reduce medical errors and prevent unintentional patient harm.

During Social Situations

Active listening techniques such as reflecting, asking open-ended questions, seeking clarification, and watching body language help you develop relationships when meeting new people . People who are active and empathic listeners are good at initiating and maintaining conversations.

Active listening helps others feel more emotionally supported. This can be beneficial when interacting with a person who has social anxiety . According to research, emotional support impacts the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain, resulting in decreased feelings of distress for socially anxious individuals.

Press Play for Advice on Active Listening

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares the value of listening to others, featuring psychiatrist Mark Goulston.

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Ways to Improve Active Listening

We've all been in situations where our "listeners" were distracted or disinterested. Or maybe you want to improve your own active listening skills so you don't do this to others.

Here are a few ways to be a better active listener yourself, or to encourage others to do the same:

• Encourage your own curiosity . The more curious you are about something, the easier it becomes to want to know more. This naturally causes you to ask more questions and to seek to understand, which are two of the core foundations of active listening in communication.
• Find a topic that interests you both . This works particularly well when engaging in small talk as you get to know one another. If you both have passion for the topic, it becomes easier to stay fully engaged in the conversation.
• Practice your active listening skills . Like with any skill, being good at active listening takes some practice. Be patient with yourself as you go through the learning process . Continuing to practice these skills may just inspire the person you're conversing with to do the same. By seeing you demonstrate active listening, they might become a better listener too.
• Understand when exiting the conversation is best . If you're talking with another person and they are clearly uninterested in the conversation, it may be best to end that conversation respectfully. This can help keep you from feeling annoyed and unheard.

If you find that you are having trouble with listening, you might benefit from professional treatment. Other options include engaging in social skills training or reading self-help books on interpersonal skills.

Keep in Mind

Active listening is an important social skill that has value in many different settings. Practice its many techniques often and it will become second nature. You'll start to ask open-ended questions and reflect what you've heard in your conversations without much (if any) thought.

"Ultimately, active listening helps the speaker feel more understood and heard—and helps the listener have more information and understanding. On both ends of active listening—people feel more connected and collaborative which is why it is such a vital tool when it comes to communication," says Romanoff.

If you find active listening techniques difficult, consider what might be getting in your way. Are you experiencing social anxiety during conversations or do you struggle with attention ? Getting help for these types of issues can help you improve your active listening skills, making you a better listener overall.

Frequently Asked Questions

Active listening helps you build trust and understand other people's situations and feelings. In turn, this empowers you to offer support and empathy. Unlike critical listening, active listening seeks to understand rather than reply. The goal is for the other person to be heard, validated, and inspired to solve their problems.

The three A's of active listening are attention, attitude, and adjustment. Attention entails being fully tuned in to the speaker's words and gestures. The proper attitude is one of positivity and open-mindedness. Adjustment is the ability to change your gestures, body language, and reactions as the speaker's story unfolds.

Reflection is the active listening technique that demonstrates that you understand and empathize with the person's feelings. In mirroring and summarizing what they've said, they feel heard and understood.

There are numerous ways to improve your active listening skills. One is to watch skilled interviewers on talk and news shows. Another is to research active listening techniques online and try them often in your everyday conversations, noting the speakers' reactions and looking for areas that need improvement.

Topornycky J, Golparian S. Balancing openness and interpretation in active listening . Collect Essays Learn Teach. 2016;9:175-184.

Pennsylvania Department of Health. Unit 6: Effective oral communication . FEMA Effective Communication .

Schulz J. Eye contact: Don't make these mistakes . Michigan State University, MSU Extension.

Dean M, Street Jr RL. A 3-stage model of patient-centered communication for addressing cancer patients' emotional distress . Patient Educ Counsel . 2014;94(2):143-148. doi:10.1016/j.pec.2013.09.025

Jahromi VK, Tabatabaee SS, Abdar ZE, Rajabi M. Active listening: The key of successful communication in hospital managers . Electron Physician . 2016;8(3):2123-2128. doi:10.19082/2123

Jones SM, Bodie GD, Hughes S. The impact of mindfulness on empathy, active listening, and perceived provisions of emotional support . Communic Res . 2016;46(6):838-865. doi:10.1177/0093650215626983

Nishiyama Y, Okamoto Y, Kunisato Y, et al. fMRI study of social anxiety during social ostracism with and without emotional support . PLoS One . 2015;10(5):e0127426. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127426

Colorado State University Global. What is active listening? 4 tips for improving communication skills .

Pennsylvania State University. Active listening . 

University of California, Berkeley. Active listening . Greater Good Science Center.

By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

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How to Develop Listening Skills

Listening skills for personal and professional success.

Realistically, we spend about half of our time listening to people. We take instructions from our boss, participate in group discussions, and listen to our colleagues, friends and relatives. Unfortunately, many do not recognize the importance of developing good listening skills. Poor listening skills can cost you an important sales deal, a vital promotion, or even a valued relationship. It is important to realize the importance of good listening skills, and to work at developing them if we want to achieve success in both our professional and personal life.

One primary reason to actively listening is to obtain information. We also listen to gain understanding, and for enjoyment as well.

Research has shown that we generally retain 25-50% of what we actually listen too, meaning that about 50% of the data is lost due to poor listening skills. If we can strengthen our listening skills, we can increase our productivity, enhance our negotiation skills and avoid conflicts.

Like other communication skills, the listening skill can be learned, practiced and improved. By paying attention to our own communication behaviors, we can begin to develop and maximize our listening skills effectively.

Be an Active Listener

A fundamental key to good listening is active listening. This involves not just listening to the words being spoken, but processing those words and trying to understand the complete message. Remember, communication involves verbal and non-verbal aptitudes, and improving our listening skills means we have to pay close attention to both.

When listening, it is important to observe the speaker, and focus on their gestures and body language.

Active listening also requires focus, and not letting your thoughts wander from the speaker.  If you find it difficult at times to concentrate, mentally repeat the words being spoken and you will find it easier to focus on the message being conveyed.

•     Acknowledge

A speaker needs to be aware that you are listening, and understand what is being spoken.  Use simple body language, like nodding your head or smiling, or verbal comments to confirm that you are listening, and exhibit a posture that demonstrates open body language.

•     Give Feedback

By providing feedback, you are able to confirm that whatever you heard and understood is the message the speaker meant to convey.  Often, our own perceptions, and resulting assumptions, twist the message that was spoken. By asking questions, reaffirming statements, and summarizing points, you can make sure that you got the same message the speaker wanted you to.

Tips on Better Listening Skills

• Always focus on the speaker.
• Never interrupt.
• Do not allow environmental factors to distract you.
• Give open and honest response.
• Allow the speaker to finish before you ask any question.
• Do not get emotional.

Consistently make conscious efforts to put to use these tips, and you will find your listening skills improve.  More importantly, when you truly improve your listening skills, you will find that your professional and personal life inevitably becomes more successful and satisfying.

12 Comments

Actively listening in any conversation is the cornerstone to good communication.

It is good to find helpful information on this as listening more could help all of us – I will refer back to future topics.

Listening skills – ahhhh. I would say this is most important.

Admittedly, my listening skills are terrible. I don’t mean for it to be like that, but once I start talking and get passionate about what I’m saying or excited, I find it hard to stop! Becoming more aware of this and reminding myself to slow down is something that I desperately need to work on. Awesome post!

So few people realize listening is such an important part of communication. Most people are so worried about saying the right thing that they forget to just close their mouth and listen!

Listening skills and common sense are the two things most people lack, but both can help you go far in life!

Terrific blog!

I like to learn new things, listing is a big one. Everybody can improved that skill!

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9 Characteristics of Auditory Learners

Discover the 9 key characteristics of auditory learners and how they process information. Learn strategies to optimize learning for those who learn best by listening.

Derek Pankaew

May 30, 2024

Learning Styles

Auditory Learning

Are you an auditory learner? Discover the power of your auditory learning style!

Some people absorb information effortlessly by listening , while others struggle to retain what they hear or listen. The answer lies in their learning style. Auditory learners learn best through hearing and listening. They possess unique characteristics of auditory learning style that set them apart from visual and other learning styles and kinesthetic learners .

Recognizing the characteristics of auditory learners helps teachers and other students create a more effective and engaging auditory learning style and experience tailored to their strengths. Adapt your study methods and environment to suit your needs. This leads to better information retention and academic success.

When determining how a person learns from the auditory learning style characteristic, it's crucial to identify the best way to make the student outcomes auditory learning style more enjoyable.

List some common characteristics of an auditory learner.

1. enjoy audiobooks and podcasts .

Auditory learners often prefer listening to information rather than reading it. Audiobooks, lectures, class discussions, and podcasts of first-class lectures are excellent resources for them.

Auditory learners enjoy audiobooks and podcasts:

• Can absorb information while multitasking or on the go by listening to audiobooks
• Easily grasp content and follow narratives through audio
• Expand their knowledge by listening to experts discuss subjects that interest them through podcasts
• May find it easier to retain information from audiobooks and podcasts compared to reading text, as hearing the information spoken aloud enhances their understanding and memory

Incorporating audiobooks and podcasts into their study routine:

• It can be an effective strategy for auditory learners

Educators can support auditory learners by:

• Recommending relevant audiobooks and podcasts
• Creating their audio content to supplement course materials

2. Prefer verbal instructions

Auditory learners thrive on verbal instructions . They excel in environments where information is presented verbally and find great value in listening to lectures, speeches, conversations and class discussions. Unlike visual learners, auditory learners feel more engaged when they hear the delivered content.

Auditory learners prefer verbal instructions:

• Are active listeners, focusing intently on the speaker
• Absorb information shared through verbal communication

When learning new concepts, auditory learners:

• Appreciate clear, step-by-step verbal explanations
• Grasp material more easily when instructions are provided through speech
• May struggle with written instructions
• Benefit from detailed verbal guidance and breaking down complex ideas into smaller, manageable verbal steps

3. Engage in active listening

Auditory learners excel at active listening . They focus intently on speakers, paying close attention to the nuances of speech, and hear things such as tone and pace, which allows them to grasp and retain spoken information effectively.

Auditory learners engage in active listening:

• Thrive on class participation
• Ask questions and engage in discussions to clarify concepts and make connections
• Reinforce their learning by contributing insights during class

To support auditory learners, educators should:

• Encourage active participation
• Facilitate Q&A sessions, group discussions, and one-on-one conversations
• Provide opportunities for verbal exchange to help auditory learners unlock their full potential

Easily pronounces technical words in any field

4. Enjoy music and rhythmic patterns

Auditory learners often have a strong affinity for music and rhythmic patterns. Incorporating musical elements into their auditory learning process can be highly beneficial, as songs, rhymes play background music, or jingles help them remember key information.

Auditory learners enjoy music and rhythmic patterns :

• Create associations between content and melody through the rhythm of music, aiding recall
• Retrieve knowledge by humming or singing tunes
• Can improve focus and reduce distractions while studying with background music, but it shouldn't be too loud or distracting
• Using songs, rhymes, or rhythmic mnemonics to reinforce concepts
• Encouraging musical associations or study playlists to optimize the auditory learning experience

5. Utilize verbal repetition

Auditory learners benefit greatly from verbal repetition when acquiring new information. Repeating a teacher or lesson's key points, phrases, or definitions aloud helps them solidify their understanding of important information and commit the knowledge to memory.

Auditory learners utilize verbal repetition:

• May naturally repeat information they want to remember by saying it out loud, rehearsing it under their breath, or teaching the concept to someone else
• Find engaging in group discussions or study sessions where participants take turns explaining topics particularly helpful
• Reinforce their grasp of the subject matter through the act of verbally articulating information
• Providing opportunities for verbal repetition in class, such as asking students to repeat key points, facilitating group discussions, or encouraging students to summarize concepts in their own words
• Incorporating verbal repetition techniques, such as mnemonics, acronyms, or storytelling, to aid in retaining information

6. Strong language skills

Auditory learners often possess strong language skills, which many teachers say can be a significant asset in their students' classroom and learning journey. They tend to have a natural aptitude for reading, writing, and speaking.

Auditory learner's with strong language skills:

• Find reading easy, as they can hear the words in their mind, enhancing comprehension and retention
• Excel in writing by effectively translating thoughts into well-structured sentences and paragraphs
• Possess strengths in public speaking and presentations, articulating clearly and engaging audiences through voice and language
• Enjoy word games, puns, and verbal puzzles, which further develop their language skills
• Incorporating group discussions, debates, presentations, and creative writing assignments
• Providing opportunities for students to showcase their language skills, helping them thrive

7. Excel in oral presentations

Auditory learners students often excel in oral classroom presentations and language-related areas of the class. They have a natural aptitude for reading, writing, and speaking.

Auditory learners excel in oral presentations:

• Find reading easy as they can hear words mentally, boosting comprehension and retention
• Possess writing strength, effectively translating thoughts into well-structured prose
• Are often articulate public speakers who engage audiences through voice and language
• Enjoy word games and verbal puzzles, which further enhance their language skills

Educators can support auditory learners through:

• Group discussions
• Presentations
• Creative writing tasks

Opportunities to showcase language skills and strategies to have students employ auditory learning strategies help students using speak them thrive.

8. Talk through problems

 Auditory learners benefit from talking through problems or ideas. Verbalizing thoughts helps them process information effectively.

Auditory learners talk through problems:

• Start discussing problems out loud when faced with a challenge, either by explaining it to others or talking to themselves
• Clarify understanding, break down complex issues, and identify solutions by putting thoughts into words
• Use verbal problem-solving as a roadmap
• Benefit from collaborating and brainstorming with others, as hearing different perspectives sparks new insights and approaches
• Think-pair-share activities
• Group discussions and strategies
• Encouraging verbal explanations of thought processes

Talking through problems allows auditory learners to name vocabulary words, answer questions, and show strategies that leverage verbal skills for enhanced critical thinking and problem-solving.

 9. Memorize through sound associations

Auditory learners often with auditory learning skills memorize and retain information by creating sound associations with good memory. They link new knowledge to familiar sounds, jingles background music, or rhymes.

Auditory learners memorize through sound associations:

• Use mnemonics based on sound to help recall information, such as catchy phrases or acronyms to remember lists
• Find setting information to music, like putting key concepts into a song or rhyme, makes them more memorable
• Create strong auditory links for later retrieval by repeating information out loud in a specific rhythm or tone
• Tap into their natural strengths through sound associations, as distinctive and memorable sounds make it easier to recall information
• Suggesting sound-based memorization techniques for online learning
• Encouraging students to create their mnemonics or songs

Leveraging sound associations helps auditory learners improve their auditory memory and recall abilities.

Benefits Of Auditory Learning

• Better retention: Auditory learners remember information they hear more easily than what they read.
• Improved understanding: Hearing information spoken aloud helps auditory learners grasp complex concepts better. Tone, emphasis, and pacing provide extra context and clarity.
• Multitasking: Auditory learners can absorb information while doing other activities, using time efficiently.
• Strong language skills: Auditory learners often excel in reading, writing, and speaking. They may have a knack for public speaking.
• Effective group learning: Auditory learners thrive in discussions, debates, and group projects. Verbal exchanges and diverse perspectives benefit them.
• Interpersonal skills: Attentive listening and engaging in meaningful discussions help auditory learners build strong relationships and excel socially.
• Enhanced problem-solving: Talking through problems and verbalizing thoughts help auditory learners break down complex issues and find solutions.
• More learning opportunities: Podcasts, audiobooks, and online lectures cater to auditory learners' preferences.

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