Active listening is one of the most important skills you can have. In fact, how well you listen has a big impact on your work and the quality of your relationships with others.
For example, we listen to get information, we listen to understand, to be entertained and to learn.
However, research suggests that we only remember between 25% and 50% of what we hear. That is, when you talk to your boss, colleagues or clients for 10 minutes, they pay attention to less than half of the conversation.
By the same token, when you are receiving instructions or feedback you are also not hearing the full message.
You hope the important parts are captured, but what if they aren’t?
Clearly, listening is a skill we can all benefit from.
By improving your active listening, you can improve your productivity as well as your ability to influence, persuade and negotiate.
What’s more, you’ll avoid conflicts and misunderstandings. All of these are necessary for success in the workplace!
What is active listening?
Active listening is a listening pattern that keeps you engaged with your speaker in a positive way.
It is the process of listening carefully as another person speaks, paraphrasing and reflecting back on what is said, and withholding judgment and advice.
When you practice active listening, you make the other person feel heard and valued.
It’s a solid foundation for any successful conversation in any setting, whether at work, at home, or in social situations.
Active listening is a skill that can be acquired and developed with practice.
However, active listening can be difficult to master and therefore will take time and patience to develop.
How important is active listening?
Active listening means, as its name suggests, listening actively. That is, to focus fully on what is being said rather than just passively listening to the speaker’s message.
Active listening involves listening with all the senses. In addition to giving the speaker full attention, it is important that the active listener is also seen to be listening – otherwise the speaker may conclude that what he is saying is uninteresting to the listener.
Interest can be conveyed to the speaker using verbal and non-verbal messages such as maintaining eye contact, nodding and smiling, or agreeing by saying “yes”.
By providing this feedback, the speaker will feel more at ease and therefore communicate more easily, openly and honestly.
Listening is the most fundamental component of interpersonal communication skills.
Listening is not something that just happens (ie listening), listening is an active process in which a conscious decision is made to hear and understand the speaker’s messages.
Listeners should remain neutral and non-judgmental, this means trying not to take sides or form opinions, especially early on in the conversation. Active listening is also a matter of patience – pauses and short periods of silence should be accepted.
Listeners should not be tempted to chime in with questions or comments every time there is a few seconds of silence. Active listening involves giving the other person time to explore your thoughts and feelings.
What are the benefits of active listening?
Helps to promote an interpersonal relationship
In all types of relationships, active listening helps you understand a person’s point of view and respond with empathy .
Active listening at work is particularly important if you are in a supervisory position or frequently interact with colleagues.
It helps you understand problems and collaborate to develop solutions. It also demonstrates your patience, a valuable asset in any workplace.
builds confidence
Trust is a huge advantage of active listening. First, consider your team’s behaviors.
Are they disengaging from what you are saying instead of paying attention to you? Are they increasingly absent from work? Do they seem reluctant to share information with you?
These are all signs that your team may not trust you . These behaviors can hinder progress by fueling resentment and decreasing productivity.
Your team members may not feel heard when they talk to you, in which case learning to actively listen creates the opportunity to rebuild trust and form healthier working relationships with your team.
Develop empathy
Active listening helps others feel comfortable sharing information with you .
When you demonstrate your ability to listen to what others have to say, people will be more interested in communicating with you on a regular basis.
Knowing that they are heard and that their superior takes time to listen, understand and value their opinions favors the level of their engagement and involvement .
People are not machines, they want to be heard, as well as to feel useful and important.
The formula here is very simple – when people are heard and their opinions are taken into account, they feel useful and important, they will soon become more involved.
Greater involvement not only in task execution but also in decision making and problem solving. Simply, the more you listen, the more they become involved and engaged.
Decreases organizational conflicts
You can be sure that there are many conflicts in your workplace . People will misunderstand each other or have different points of view.
Active listening is crucial in these circumstances because we often only see issues from our own perspective. Sometimes we get so deeply stuck in our own position that we don’t even think about it from the other person’s perspective.
Active listening encourages us to see issues from different points of view, recognize other people’s feelings, and generally help them.
For example, think of a time when you disagreed with a colleague, or witnessed a conflict between two colleagues, in the workplace.
Did you see the issue from their point of view? Is this what created the misunderstanding? Active listening forms a foundation for listening to the other person’s message and moving toward a resolution.
As a result, it also fosters a culture of respect in the workplace.
Stimulates teamwork
When employees’ ideas are implemented into the final solutions, they will feel part of the solution and be more interested in working as a team.
Their performance in carrying out tasks will be much higher then in situations where they just carry out what they were told.
Involving more people in the problem solving and decision-making process improves the process itself and will result in better decisions.
Listening to more opinions will eliminate pain points, guesswork, and one-sided solutions. It will take into account more perspectives, opinions, views and experiences.
Increases the feeling of security
Active listening involves seeking clarification to ensure that you correctly understand the speaker’s message.
This creates an opportunity to assess whether there is a problem, or whether what they are telling you is a sign that a problem may be surfacing, and devise a strategy to address the problem.
It’s important that you are allowing yourself to develop a full sense of the problem and evaluate all the different aspects based on the details you hear.
This can help you discover a potential problem and tackle a problem at its very root, rather than merely curing the symptoms and then having the problem reappear later on.
Has relevant information
The focus of active listening is to keep you engaged in the conversation, which allows you to absorb more specific details of the interaction.
If you are receiving instructions or training, you will be able to remember details more easily.
As a leader, you will likely have to train others and convey messages to others, so it’s important to remember the details because others will be acting on your words.
If you missed part of the original message, your message recipients will also only hear parts of the original message. This can lead to misunderstandings and impact productivity, the quality of task execution or the quality of the products themselves.
How to practice active listening?
Focus on what is being said
The way to improve your active listening skills is to make a conscious effort to hear not just the words another person is saying but, more importantly, the full message being communicated.
To do this, you must pay attention to the other person very carefully.
You can’t let yourself be distracted by whatever else might be going on around you, or forming counterarguments while the other person is still talking.
You also can’t lose focus on what the other person is saying.
If you find it difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying , try mentally repeating their words as they say them. This will reinforce your message and help you stay focused.
Do not do other things while the caller is talking
Active listening involves more than just listening to someone, you must focus fully on what is being said. Listen with all your senses and give the speaker your full attention.
So put your phone away, ignore distractions, avoid thinking about other things and focus on the current conversation.
Also, to show the person that you’re really into it, look at them and be aware of nonverbal behaviors. Use open, non-threatening body language.
Avoid bending your arms, smile, bow and nod at key moments, as well as control your facial expressions, avoiding those that convey negative impressions.
Making eye contact is especially important. In general, aim to keep it for 60% to 70% of the time you spend listening.
have empathy
In that sense, to improve your active listening skills, you need to let the other person know that you are listening to what they are saying.
To understand the importance of this, ask yourself if you’ve ever been involved in a conversation when you wondered if the other person was listening to what you were saying.
You wonder if your message is getting through, or if it’s even worth talking about.
Acknowledgment can be something as simple as a nod. You are not necessarily agreeing with the person, you are simply indicating that you are listening.
Using body language and other cues to recognize that you’re listening can also help you pay attention. Try to respond to the speaker in a way that encourages him to keep talking so you can get the information you need.
While nodding your head you say you are interested, an occasional question or comment to recap what was said also communicates that you are listening and understanding your message.
How to practice active listening at work?
One goal of active listening is to establish a comfortable tone that gives your colleague an opportunity to think and speak.
Pay attention to your body language as well as your frame of mind when engaging in active listening. Focus on the moment, make eye contact, and be respectful of the listener.
Furthermore, active listening requires an open mind. As a listener and leader, be open to new ideas, new perspectives, and new possibilities as you practice active listening.
Even when good listeners have strong opinions, they suspend judgment, hold back any criticism, and avoid interruptions.
In that sense, don’t be shy about asking questions about any subject or when you have any doubts. Active listening is first understanding the other person, then being understood as the listener.
As you gain a clearer understanding of the other person’s perspective, you can begin to introduce your own ideas, feelings, and suggestions.
You can talk about a similar experience you had, or share an idea that was triggered by a comment made earlier in the conversation.
Once the situation has been talked about this way, both you and your colleague have a good view of where things stand.
At this point, the conversation can turn to problem solving: What hasn’t been tried yet? What don’t we know? What new approaches could be taken?
How to create genuine connections with active listening?
For example, have you ever experienced a situation where you needed to talk and realized that the person wasn’t paying attention? How did it feel?
On the other hand, what about when someone needed to talk to you and you didn’t pay attention? You kept looking at your cell phone, or you kept cutting the subject. How did the person react to this?
To become an effective communicator , you need to learn to listen as much as you learn to speak. Unfortunately, most people focus more on talking than listening.
Whether in a one-on-one conversation or a group meeting, focusing on what others are saying allows you to present yourself more effectively. When you listen correctly, you also learn more.
Inattentive listening generates rework, distrust, lack of motivation and distance between people. In this way, non-attention creates distractions and lack of focus, which directly impact our daily lives, creating communication noise.
Examples of active listening at work
It is often easier to learn by reading examples. Here are some examples of active listening.
- “Tell me what I can do to help.”
- “I know how difficult a corporate restructuring can be, how is staff morale right now?”
- “So, do you think we need to build our marketing efforts on social media?”
- “I understand that you would like more frequent feedback on your performance.”
- “Thanks. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”
- “How long do you expect your hiring process to last?”.
- “What is your average staff turnover rate?”
- “Can you please provide me with some background on your relationship with your former supplier?”
- “I was also conflicted about returning to work after the birth of my son.”
Conclusion
When you have a conversation, are you listening just to talk, or are you really listening to what the other person has to say? Being an active listener means you are really absorbing what the other person is saying.
Active listening has many benefits, one of which is that it makes the speaker feel validated and understood, which can lead to a more meaningful connection than if you just half-listen and wait for your turn to speak.
Active listening is a skill that can take work, but the results of better conversations and stronger social bonds are well worth it.
