Active Listening

Description of Active Listening. Explanation.

Definition Active Listening. Description.

When people talk to each other, they do not necessarily listen. The purpose of active listening is to improve mutual understanding through carefully absorbing what the other has said.

Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding to others, focusing attention on the speaker. Suspending one's own frame of reference, suspending judgment and avoiding other internal mental activities are important to fully attend to the speaker.

Active listening requires 3 things:

Comprehending (a shared meaning between the parties in the communication)
Retaining (remembering what was communicated)
Responding (verbal or nonverbal responses from the listener to show the message is being listened to)

Effective Communication

Besides poor listening, 4 more factors are known to prevent good communication and understanding what the other person means:

Subject Complexity
- Is the subject matter new or does the listener has experience with it?
- Is the subject matter difficult to understand, or simple?
- Is the subject matter interesting and important to the listener?
The Speaker
- Is the speaker experienced?
- What are the non-verbal cues of the speaker?
- What frame of mind is he or she?
- How personable, threatening, intelligent, etc.?
The Presentation
- Is the information illustrated with visuals?
- Is technology used effectively?
- Is the information introduced logically?
- Are concepts introduced incrementally, with examples?
The Environment
- Is the environment conducive to listening?
- Can the listener interact and exchange information with the speaker?
- Are there distractions that can be avoided?

Active Listening Forum (23)

Dialogue Communication Network
"There is a communication dilemma that says "I know you think you understood what you thought I said, (or wrote), but I am not so sure that what you thought I said (or wrote) was what I really meant".
My point here is that we need to find a way for communication and the resulting information to be more understandable, more relative and aligned around organizational problems.
A way to approach this problem is to establish a "dialogue" communication network as the process for disseminating information.
Dialogue works on the premise of "listening" with the intent to understand, and addresses clarification and mutual interest and input with building consensus and understanding.
If ever we had organizational and/or a societal problems we have found them.
It isn't that we can't fix our problems, it's we can't understand them."

Real Life Examples of Active Listening...
"Have you ever reflected on a person who is awaiting the final judgment in court - guilty or not guilty – on the fall of the hammer? Even if a mother-of-all bomb was to fall next to him, he would have heard nothing and remained unmoved. All that counts to him is the fall of the hammer! This is active listening – real and profound.
Active listening implies that everything other than what the speaker is saying is of ‘no’ significance, that you will hold your verdict till after the speaker has ended his input, your body language must reflect empathy, understanding, compassion, and whether is assent or dissent from your end show respect. You would then have heard, understood and built a real affiliation with the speaker."

What is Active Listening?
"Active listening is the courage and patience one should have to allow others to change themselves."

Beware of the Power of the Influence of Speakers
"Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, I have come to bury Caesar not to praise him" - Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
All those who listened to Anthony were convinced.
So, the gist behind is that it is good to be an active listener but you should beware of the capacity of the speaker, orator or story teller. Very often their power of influence through words and their ability to convince people to go out of their normal way (and which is in the interest of the speaker) is very strong.
Therefore the active listener should be someone who can screen and visualise the limits in order not to be influenced by the speaker too much."

Active Listening is 2-way
"Active listening, as I understanding it, means to give back information what I understood. This is valid for both sides of a discussion, the sender and the receiver of a message.
Why?
As a sender, when my dialog partner provides in his/her words back what I told him/her, I have a feeling for what is understood so I can adjust something if I think it is necessary.
For me as an receiver, I know when I can give back what I undstood, my dialog partner and sender knows if he needs to adjust something.
In both cases it means working on the same issue and there can be no parallel processing of different things."

Active Listening is a Key International Competence
"A key tactic to effective active listening is to check and clarify, rather than assume the understanding of others. This can be done by paraphrasing and exploring words that others use as well as the meaning they attach to them. Hence, this requires the cultural intelligence of tuning into the culture-specific understanding of oral words and non-verbal communication."

WHEN To Be a Good Listener?
"Should one ALWAYS be a good, active listener?
I believe it depends on the quality of the dialogue and the extent of its importance to you and points for discussion and what its importance to you both on the field for a personal or technical, vocational or practical in general.
So we should choose to be a good listeners at the right time."

What Politics can Teach us About Listening
"Politicians are incredible! They say and repeat that they are the best listeners while they never really take into account what people say.
But people are even more incredible! They want to be listened to and they criticize politics for not doing that, but yesterday 3 million of Frenchs voted, while 8 million watched TV and listened to politics!
Hopefully, it's not the same at work... Or is it?"

Can Active Listening Make you Lonely?
"Listening is of vital importance in every tenet of human interactions, from ages to now, be it business or personal life.
But, surprisingly, I have observed that, the more a person is willing to listen or listens, the more likely he'll find himself more lonely, as the time passes.
Strange isn't it?"

Listening Includes Non-Verbal Communication As Well !
"Listening goes beyond words and should be extended to non-verbal communication. In some cases, the truth of what is being said lies in what is NOT said.
The listener should not only open his/her ears wide, but also all other senses to critically observe both the content of the message and the talking agent."

Tips on the HOW of Active Listening
"1. The listener should repeat via rephrasing what the speaker said, e.g. ... I hear what you said: you feel that there is not enough management support on skill training...
Note that in the repeating, some rephrasing is necessary, but the meaning and message of the speaker should be kept unchanged.
2. Ask the speaker whether what you have just rephrased is the correct translation of what the speaker just said, e.g. ... is my understanding of what you said correct?
3. Be gentle (respectful) even if there is any disagreement, e.g. instead of saying "I think you are wrong", try: "I am not sure if I can agree with what you just said".
By using "not sure", you are allowing some flexibility and you are allowing the speaker to change his mind. At the same time you also keep open and acknowledge the possibility that maybe the speaker is right after all.
Any other tips > please add a reaction!"

Listening can be a Universal Compensator of Lack of EI
"I have coached many leaders and have discovered that listening can be a universal compensator for a leader who lacks emotional intelligence."

Comprehend, Retain and Respond
"I teach adults and this is so relevant to the class room atmosphere both for me and the student. Those three items active listeners must practice are important: comprehend, retain and respond.
Most students think all there is is to get the notes and file them away. Six months later, they still have not retained even though they may now be "familiar" with the concept."

Good Listening is Welcoming the Richness of the Sharing
"Listening is about being able to put our ego at distance from the objective of the exchange, not reacting to what the other brings into the exchange, but welcoming the richness of the sharing.
We need to be clear about the objectives of it and work through it together knowing that both parties have to bring value."

Demonstrating How Difficult Good Listening Is
"I have run a development program on communications many times. Often I include a simple fun listening game.
- The game starts with one attendee going out of the room with the presenter.
- The presenter verbally gives some background information, for example how an imaginary task should be completed.
- The first attendee stays outside and is then joined by one more attendee, who listens to the message as it is being explained by the first attendee.
- This obviously continues until the message has been passed one by one to every attendee.
- Of course, during the process, attendees are not allowed to take notes as they listen to the message.
- The last attendee then writes the message received on a white board.
- Then the presenter reveals the original message on the whiteboard.
You can guarantee the first and last version will be very different. Often the key point in the original message has disappeared.
A variant of the game is to ask each person, to privately write down what they shared verbally, immediately after they have spoken.
Then you can see step by step see how the message progressively changed."

8 Types of Poor Listeners
"Following are the 8 categories of poor listeners:
1. Mind readers - they always try to read the mind of opponent while listening to them. The will not concentrate on what is being told to them.
2. Rehearsers - this type of listener is always rehearse as to how to react when a person approaches them.
3. Filterers - this type of listeners always filters the things from the conversation of their own benefit.
4. Dreamers - it's a dreamer and always goes into dreams and never concentrate what is going on.
5. Comparers - this type of listeners always compare the things what have been told or explained to them.
6. Subject changers - this type of people will always change your topic, you are discussing about 'x' they will take you to 'y'.
7. Arguers - this another typical style of listeners they will always argue with you.
8. Agreers - this type of people will agree to all what ever you say just to leave them alone as soon as possible. I.e. yes, yes, yes..."

Good Listening Allows for a Good Response
"Only a good listener can become a good speaker. Because an accurate period of listening gives him/her ample time to analyze and come to a proper judgment, while a rushed, hurried reply might spoil manythings."

Obstacles to Active Listening
"The main obstacle to active listening, in my view, is often the lack of willingness to listen. It is not a simple issue of skills.
From time to time, we jump to conclusions before listening to what others are to saying, with the belief that we already know what they are to say, and that we know everything.
In the end, the real losers are those who have the arrogance not to listen.
It has been proven that, for effective management, and for successful handling of issues, we need to know not only what we know, but more importantly what we do not know."

4 Levels of Listening
"In our work as consultants we have identified 4 levels of listening:
1. Downloading (I might say yes at the right time, but don’t really pay attention)
2. Objective (I hear what you say, but I always have a similar story on my mind)
3. Empathic (I listen – I understand you)
4. Generative Creating (open heart, open mind, open will)
Do I need to say what really matters :-)."

Be Careful With Interpreting What is Said
"Although we refer to listening as the most effective way of communication, it is very important to note that we as human beings stereotype and are very infatuated by the impression we have, of the person in front of us.
Managers need to be more rational and evaluate more what is actually being said than what they perceive that the person, maybe is thinking but not saying.
The interpreting function in any communication process is vital, irrespective of hearing or listening as we may hear and listen carefully, but still interpret to our own advantage.
Each one of us is different and only when we accept this, we can start learning from others as communication is one of the most effective learning tools. As Lt Col Amit rightly stated, today we are so much turning into a selfish and competitive race. That makes it difficult to openly accept the right of others and your wrongness. But those who have the skill to extract the real feelings of others through effective communication will gain benefits in future."

Listening Does not Equal Hearing!
"During a workshop on leading, we were able to distinguish the difference between listening and hearing.
- Hearing is complete as something is heard.
- Listening covers hearing, processing, converting and interpreting the ideas coming through hearing.
The Dutch expert also shared that most South-Asian people lack listening skills, rather they believe more in responding quickly.
We also concluded that the way a person is brought up also plays a vital role in shaping up communication.
A positive outlook could be to think on how the listening culture could be improved among particular group of people. I have a simple analogy in this area. One has to act like a child to help the child understand something. It covers language, gestures and many other actions as to improve their listening skills."

Listening Brings Success in People Management
"Managing anything requires effective communication. Listening is an integral part of communication.
Speaking and writing we learn from childhood onwards. But in listening we rarely receive formal training.
But listening brings success, especially in people management."

Often the one who listens looses...
"Effective communication is key to success. The first principle is normally to listen to the other(s).
However, in my view the competitive market and the time constraints which are there in today's scenario the person with whom we are communicating already has a good view / ideas as long as you are not interfering in his area of jurisdiction. That is to say the selfish motive of individuals, group, organization is nowadays so strong that often the person which listens and accepts is the looser."

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