Active Listening

Editor's Notes

1. Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better listener, you will improve your productivity, as well as your ability to influence, persuade and negotiate. What's more, you'll avoid conflict and misunderstandings. All of these are necessary for workplace success!-Most people go through their daily lives engaging in many conversations with friends, co-workers, and our family members. But most of the time, we don’t listen as well as we could or sometimes should. We’re often distracted by other things in the environment, such as the television, the Internet, our cell phones, or something else. We think we’re listening to the other person, but we’re really not giving them our full attention.Enter a skill called “active listening.” Active listening is all about building rapport, understanding, and trust. By learning the skills below, you will become a better listener and actually hear what the other person is saying, not just want you think they are saying or what you want to hear. While therapists are often made fun of for engaging in active listening, it is a proven technique that helps people talk and feel free to continue talking even if the person they are talking to doesn’t have a lot to offer the other person (other than their ear).Are you as good a listener as you think you are?
2.  When we seek to understand rather than be understood, our modus operandi will be to listen. Often, when we enter into conversation, our goal is to be better understood. We can be better understood, if first we better understand. With age, maturity, and experience comes silence. It is most often a wise person who says little or nothing at the beginning of a conversation or listening experience. We need to remember to collect information before we disseminate it. We need to know it before we say it.It’s no longer just about sound but about the thoughts, feelings, point of view, expectations, memories, sensations, beliefs — the whole of the other person — or at least as much of the whole as is available in the moment.- When you listen, truly listen, the rewards are immediate.  Because the better you listen the better you are appreciated. The better you appreciate the other. The better you are connected. The better your relationship.
3. One simple way to understand listening is to ask yourself — what do I want from the other person when I want to be understood? What we want most is to be appreciated. Not just heard, technically, but to feel like the other person gets us.In his book “Stranger in a Strange Land“, Robert Heinlein coined the word “grok.” It’s pronounced GRAHK, and it means to understand something so well that you fully absorb it into yourself.  You know it through and through. You get it.That’s how we feel when we travel. We grok each other. Therefore there’s no need for many words because we hear and listen — body and being.Listening is not automatic.It takes practice.It takes intention.There are several misconceptions about listening. The first of these is listening and hearing are the same thing. Hearing is the physiological process of registering sound waves as they hit the eardrum. We have no control over what we hear. The sounds we hear have no meaning until we give them their meaning in context.Listening on the other hand is an active process that constructs meaning from both verbal and nonverbal messages
4. Game
5. Look at the speaker directly.Put aside distracting thoughts.Don't mentally prepare a battle!Avoid being distracted by environmental factors. "Listen" to the speaker's body language.
6. Nod occasionally.Use facial expressions.Note your posture and make sure it is open and inviting.Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments
7. 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 counter arguments.