How Active Listening Improves Communications

We can all recall situations where we have utterly failed to listen to what someone else is saying. For various reasons, we haven’t taken in anything useful. How often have you been introduced to someone by name, only not to know their name thirty seconds later? This usually happens due to a failure in active listening.

In truth, there are only two states when communicating with another person: actively listening and not listening. Active listening differs from plain old listening. It is the art of listening for meaning. We need to listen carefully to gain meaning from another person's words. Meaning is not necessarily assured even when we actively listen, but we will at least know that we don’t understand and can ask the correct questions to gain enlightenment.

Active listening must become a habit because it is the foundation of effective communication. Failure to listen actively can undoubtedly have dire consequences. Imagine a troop commander not listening to his orders and attacking the wrong target.

If you’ve fallen short in this area, you are not alone. Many people give the appearance of listening but fail to hear what is being said to them. They assume that listening is such a basic sense that it will happen automatically. This is not the case. Or it might be that they are so used to making all the outward gestures of listening that they are convinced it is happening. It is not difficult to pick up on tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions, all of which indicate the gist of what is being said. All it then takes is to hear a few keywords, and it becomes effortless to think you have understood everything you’ve been told and to give the convincing impression that this is so by returning appropriate tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions.

Active listening requires the listener to understand, interpret, and evaluate what they are being told. Without this, communication is nothing but a façade, which may suffice when you pass the time of day talking to a neighbor in the street but is wholly inadequate in any business environment. As businesses depend on human interaction to succeed, the quality of that interaction must be of the highest caliber, and interaction means communication.

There are many reasons why people need to listen properly. They may be distracted by an activity they are attempting while listening, by other thoughts in their head that they deem to be more critical, or by thinking about what they will say next, which is a common flaw in communication between parties whose opinions differ.

Active listening focuses attention on the speaker. It involves the listener temporarily subjugating their needs in deference to the speaker's. It requires concentration and a genuine willingness to hear what is being said.

Why Is It So Important to Listen Actively?

Where there is an absence of active listening, there needs to be better communication; where there is poor communication, opportunities are missed, and problems are created or perpetuated. Active listening encourages people to open up, reduces the chance of misunderstandings, helps resolve problems and conflicts, and builds trust.

Most people spend up to 90% of their waking time engaged in communication, whether reading, writing, speaking, or listening. However, over half of our communication time is taken up with listening – or what passes for listening. Anyone in a managerial position will likely devote as much as 70% of their communication time to listening. The higher up the chain of command you go, the more demand is placed on the individual to listen to other people.

We hear only around 25% to 50% of what is said to us. Out of a 10-minute conversation, you may get only 2½ to 5 minutes of helpful information. While that may be sufficient to grasp the general thrust of the conversation, it still leaves 50% to 75% that has passed you by. The potential for important details to be missed is therefore significant.

In a way, the importance of listening hardly needs explaining. No one can live in this modern world and not understand the need to communicate with other people. It is not the importance of listening that requires stressing; it is the misconception that listening is easy and happens by default. All human relationships, from the most personal that we enjoy with our partner and children, through those we have with friends and our more extended family, to those that occur in our work life, and those we experience with mere acquaintances – all these relationships are based on our ability to communicate effectively.

One of the most common complaints following any failed personal relationship is that the other party didn’t listen or that there was a lack of understanding, which amounts to the same thing. When a person appears to be listening but fails to truly understand what is being said and where the other person is coming from, this is because listening has not taken place – not the active listening that matters.
Human beings are social creatures. Not only is communication unavoidable, but it is truly desirable. We crave interaction to enliven our time on this earth and because it keeps us (relatively) sane. It allows us to express our emotions—our hopes and fears, joys and sorrows—and share them with others we think may be interested or who can help us make sense of them. But when we speak, there has to be someone listening for it to matter.

In simple terms, speaking is one person reaching out, and listening is another accepting and taking hold. Together, they form communication, the basis of all human relationships. This being the case, the listener must be genuinely listening to offer constructive feedback. How catastrophic would it be if a depressed individual called a helpline and, after fifteen minutes of pouring out their heart, the listener said: “Uh-huh. What? Sorry, I wasn’t listening; tell me again.” A failure to listen can create immense hurt, if not genuine damage.

Active listening tells the speaker that what they have to say matters. It creates a sense of confidence that advice is at hand, advice that will be considered and valuable. A listener is a sounding board that allows the speaker to develop thoughts that may, up to that moment, have been difficult to clarify.

Common Barriers to Active Listening

Listening may be affected by several barriers that impede proper communication.

Ignorance and Delusion

One barrier to active listening is not realizing it isn’t taking place. Most of us can get through life easily without developing our listening skills, mainly because we fail to classify listening as a skill and because almost everyone else is in the same state of ignorance. It is very easy to delude yourself into thinking that listening involves allowing another person to speak in your presence. Even when you are the one talking and faced with a lousy listener, it may not dawn that you are as bad at listening as they are. Only when faced with a truly gifted listener – one who actively listens – can we become aware of how lacking we are by comparison.

Reluctance

The possible result of actively listening to another person is that you become embroiled in their situation. People who share problems often do so because they seek advice, but they may also want the listener to become more deeply involved. Where this is obvious from the outset, the listener may be reluctant to become implicated and willfully fail to lend a sympathetic and understanding ear.

Bias and Prejudice

The listener’s interpretation of what she or he is hearing may cause them to respond negatively to the speaker. They either assume they know the situation because they have faced similar conditions or allow their preconceptions to color how they respond. In the first case, the listener does not properly listen to the facts because they already think they know the whole story. This means they might belittle the problem or offer a response that does not meet the listener's needs. In the second case, the listener judges the speaker negatively because their opinions or beliefs contradict theirs.

Subject Matter

The listener may not be interested in what the speaker is saying. This may be because they find the subject dull, feel it is too far beyond their experience to comment on, or because their lack of knowledge causes them to dismiss the severity of the problem. All these will cause the listener to switch off to a certain extent.

Status of the Speaker

The listener’s opinion of the speaker as a person may influence the extent to which they are happy to pay attention and give their time. This may be based on simple likes and dislikes or status. The former situation may cause the listener to hang on to every word or positively resent the imposition. The latter problem may also produce these same results: the thoughts of a low-status speaker may be deemed unworthy, and those of a high-status individual may provoke rapt attention because the listener feels honored to have been included or consulted.

How the Listener is Feeling

Even if it is in your job description to listen to other people, your ability to actively listen to them can easily be affected by how you feel. We all know how this goes. If you’re not careful, your emotions can dictate your whole day. This includes how you respond to people who want to bend your ear with their problems. If you are in a good mood, you feel loving and giving and able to offer your best advice based on your incisive analysis of what you have just actively listened to. If your mood sucks, the very notion that someone wants to burden you with their thoughts, let alone their problems, makes you resentful. So, you fake it and pretend to pay attention and be interested, wasting everyone’s time.

Time and Place

These physical factors influence whether you are willing or able to actively listen to what you are being told. If you have limited time to listen, you may be so concerned with time constraints that you cannot fully concentrate. The truth is that even five minutes of active listening may prove a golden time for the speaker, but it may not be possible with a clock-watching listener.

Location can also be a problem. Having a heart-to-heart in the street next to a mechanical digger in full swing will never be conducive to active listening. Equally, trying to talk about a delicate matter with someone who is hard of hearing and won’t wear an aid in a crowded restaurant is doomed to failure. These may be extreme examples, but they highlight the importance of choosing the right time and place. As a listener, it is far better to be respectful and schedule a more appropriate time and place than to succumb to the pressure to listen now and then not listen at all.

The Four Components of Active Listening

Four basic components allow active listening to occur, and the listener is responsible for them: acceptance, empathy, honesty, and specifics.

Acceptance

Acceptance is about respecting the person you are talking to, not based on what they have to say, but instead on the simple fact that they are human beings with the right to express their thoughts. This acceptance should be as unconditional as possible, with the proviso that there may be instances where the beliefs or opinions expressed are so anathema to legality and morality that acceptance must be withdrawn.

Accepting means avoiding expressing agreement or disagreement with what the other person is saying, at least initially. This encourages the other person to be less defensive and more open to further exploring their situation and revealing more of themselves.

Empathy

This is usually interpreted as the listener’s ability to understand the speaker’s situation on an emotional level, based on the listener’s frame of reference rather than a sense of what should be felt – which is sympathy, not empathy. In other words, to empathize with the speaker, you should know how they are feeling because you have experienced the same or very similar feelings yourself. For example, you cannot correctly have empathy with a suffering individual unless you have experienced a similar loss of a loved one.
Empathy may also be defined as the listener’s desire to feel the speaker’s emotions, regardless of their own experience, but this does not get to the heart of the matter. Genuine empathy is rare and wonderful, requiring the listener to have an authentic emotional reaction based on personal experience.

Honesty

This is self-explanatory. This refers to the listener's openness, frankness, and genuineness. This means the listener is open about their reactions to what they have heard. This must come after the acceptance component and once the speaker has divulged as much as they will. Honest reactions given too soon can easily stifle further elucidation on the speaker's part. The aim is that sincerity on the listener's part evokes candor in the speaker. When one person emerges behind a facade, the other is likelier to do the same.

Specifics

This refers to the need to deal with details rather than generalities. Often, a person who has a problem will avoid painful feelings by being abstract or impersonal. They may speak about general situations that “other people” experience without directly involving themselves or suggesting that they are in any way affected. Therefore, for communication to be worthwhile, the listener should request that the speaker be more specific. This may necessitate a direct challenge to the speaker to open up personally and “own” the problem they are attempting to avoid. This could work in two ways.

For these four components to work effectively, they should be evident to the listener. While some people may speak openly in the vain and unsubstantiated hope that their listener will respond correctly, others will require upfront signs that their words will be received as they wish. This is a decidedly tough ask, especially in a business environment where the two people may be managers and employees and have little knowledge of how the other person usually behaves. In this case, it has more to do with the speaker’s intuitive assessment of the listener than with the listener’s ability to create the perfect listening persona.

Improving Your Active Listening Skills

The first step is to accept that improvement is possible and necessary. Once this has been done, specific skills can be learned so that you can almost instantly become an active listener and more effective communicator. Practice, however, is the key to your success. They will only become second nature to you through repeated application of these skills.

Bear in mind that body language is a large part of active listening. You may be perfectly able to actively listen lying on your back on a bed with your eyes closed, but that will not convince the speaker that you are paying full attention and may cause them to be reticent with their information or not to bother at all.

Face the speaker

It is essential to adopt the correct physical attitude. Slouching in a chair facing a window while the speaker is placed to one side of you does not create the right impression. It would be best to sit straight, your body facing the speaker, and canted slightly forward to show your interest through positive body language.

Maintain eye contact

This does not mean never blinking or looking away. There needs to be a comfortable and comforting degree of eye contact when two people are communicating. Where eye contact is broken, it should not be to be interested in someone or something else. It is obvious when this is happening. There is no magic formula for when to break eye contact, for how long, and where else to look. Just remember that eye contact will be governed mainly by how genuinely interested you are in what the speaker is saying. If you have no interest or are not concentrating on active listening, then you can be reasonably confident that your level of eye contact will be giving the game away.

Assess the emotion, not just the words.

Active listening also involves analyzing the speaker’s body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions. Words alone are often a poor guide to how a person feels. Sometimes, they are in direct contradiction. If communication is to be effective, it must be honest, so the goal of active listening is to decipher the truth of a situation; even if the speaker comes to you, don’t assume that they will be straight-talking. They may want you to look behind the words in their body language because they may need the truth coaxed out if it is too painful to utter.

Minimize external distractions

It is difficult to speak or listen when there are distractions around you. You must turn off the TV, switch off the radio, stop reading, stop writing, and pay attention. The speaker must also cease any distracting activities.

Respond appropriately

This should take care of itself if you are genuinely interested and listening. However, remember that some people are less animated than others, and if you are like this, you may want to insert a few nods or verbal acknowledgments. It may help to say you understand or offer other spoken encouragements occasionally. Be careful not to overdo it. Saying “Wow, really?” and “fascinating” every few seconds can be distracting, or it may seem false, as though you are sticking to some formula you read in a book. You can also ask questions, provided they do not interrupt the flow of the speaker’s thoughts.

Focus on the speaker.

This means fighting the temptation to prepare what you will say while they are speaking. This can be difficult to resist, especially when the speaker says something that sparks a helpful response in us that we fear we will have forgotten by the time they finish speaking. If you want to recall a point they made, try remembering just one trigger word that will help rather than working out your whole reply in your head in advance. Remember that the conversation will usually follow a logical flow once the speaker has finished, so there should be no need to do anything other than listen.

Minimize internal distractions

If your brain is chattering away when you are supposed to be listening, try to refocus your thoughts on the speaker and keep doing this as often as required. Your ability to manage internal distractions will improve with practice. It may help to behave as though your life depends on what they have to say, or you could try repeating their words mentally as they say them.

Be sincerely interested

The above two skills will be easier to master if you are genuinely interested in what the speaker has to say. As mentioned, disinterest is a massive barrier to active listening, and conjuring interest may not be easy.

Have sympathy and empathy

These will allow you to be more interested. You can empathize by remembering when your emotions are on par with the speaker’s. If you cannot recall such an occasion, you can sympathize through acceptance – accepting that you are a human being who requires understanding.

Be open-minded

Don’t prejudge the speaker. Even when they begin with a disturbing comment, wait until they have finished before making any decisions. Some people do not express themselves well and may not mean exactly what they say. Subsequent comments they make may place a different perspective on their initial comments. The key is to be patient and wait. Do not assume or allow preconceptions to wreck communications. When people disagree, it becomes harder for both parties to listen actively.

Avoid “me” stories

These happen when a speaker says something that triggers a memory of something similar in your experience. Then you are just waiting for them to shut up so you can share. This can be disastrous for communication because you jump in and take over when the speaker ends their sentence. “Me” stories usually begin with “Yeah, that’s just like me …” Phrased in such a way, the listener has justified their interjection by linking their circumstances with the speakers. However, such stories are little more than an opportunity to discuss your favorite subject: yourself. They may also take the conversation so far off-topic that the original impetus is lost. Keep your stories to yourself unless the speaker asks if you have experienced a similar situation because they genuinely want to know how you handled it.

Don’t be afraid of silence.

Active listening requires you to absorb what you have heard, analyze it, and respond. Commenting instantly may give the impression that you have been formulating your response when you should have listened. You may also be coming in too early. The speaker may only have paused to clarify their thoughts before speaking again and may need that silence to think. They will let you know what they want you to say. They may ask: “What do you think?” or “What would you do?”

Practice emotional intelligence

This is all about being aware of your emotions and opinions. As much as your feelings can aid active listening by creating empathy, they can also hamper communication if they cause you to disagree with the speaker. This can produce negative results if you start an argument, but it can also be detrimental even if you keep your counsel and say nothing. Negative thoughts about what you are being told will work against your ability to listen actively, and you will almost certainly transmit this to the speaker in your body language. You can combat this problem by being more emotionally intelligent. This means accepting that your feelings could affect your listening abilities if you let them, then keeping them under wraps until the speaker has said all they want to say.

Take notes

Although this may make you appear like a psychiatrist, jotting down a few keywords can help. This counters the need to interrupt for fear of forgetting and provides a reference once the speaker has finished so that you know you will be able to address the pertinent issues. Some people may want to speak at length without interruptions, and even the most attentive and active listener will then struggle to recall all the details they want to comment on. This tactic is more relevant in formal and business situations. Ask whether the speaker minds you scribbling a little as they speak and explain the purpose.

Check your understanding

This is a great way to focus your thoughts on listening, demonstrate to the speaker that you are listening, help clarify the listener’s thoughts, and ensure that you genuinely understand. It involves asking clarification questions when appropriate and may involve restating part of what you have heard. You may start with: “So I am right in thinking …” or “Let me just clarify …” or “So are you saying …”

Reflective Listening

Reflective listening refers to the final point made above, and it deserves special attention because it concerns how the listener deals with what they have heard. This is what makes or breaks the art of communication.

The four components of active listening—acceptance, empathy, honesty, and specifics—all create reflective responses in the listener.

The main principles of reflective listening are:

• Listen more than you talk.
• Deal with personal details, not impersonal generalities.
• Decipher the feelings behind the words to understand the issues better.
• Restate and clarify what you have heard.

Understand the speaker’s frame of reference, a person's views on an issue based on their own subjective experience of it, and avoid responding from your own. Respond with acceptance and empathy, not coldly or with fake concern.

Dealing with personal details means the listener chooses to explore the effects on the speaker. If someone is worried that they may be about to lose their job, the focus should be on that person’s fears, not on the current state of the job market. The speaker will undoubtedly have researched the facts, figures, and probabilities and heard a hundred times from well-meaning individuals that their jobs may not be lost. What is required in this case, and what reflective listening provides, is the chance to let the concerned person express their fears to another human being. This is often the primary reason for talking.

When the listener responds personally, the conversation remains at the level the speaker intended. This allows the listener to explore their feelings further, improve their understanding of the situation, and attain a healthier attitude. There is no point in the listener saying, “Don’t worry; I’m sure it won’t happen.” This empty platitude reveals that the listener has not even slightly grasped why the speaker opened up. Telling a worried person not to worry is tantamount to ending the conversation then and there. It dismisses the real problem: the speaker’s emotional reaction to the situation. This is particularly damaging when revealing those emotions in the first place was such a huge step.

Reflective listening is concerned with responding, which underpins all effective communication. It is not about leading the speaker in a direction chosen by the listener because the listener believes this to be the best course of action based on their frame of reference. The responsive listener addresses those matters that the speaker is currently discussing. However, the reflective listener must evaluate not just the words spoken but all the speaker conveys through body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions. This will provide the best interpretation of the speaker’s actual emotional state. When a person feels that they are understood at an emotional level, that’s the moment when they feel they are truly understood.

Always remember that the emotion you read in a person’s expression may be entirely at odds with the content of their spoken message. Content refers to the ideas, reasons, theories, assumptions, and descriptions expressed verbally by the speaker. Since many people do not explicitly state their emotions within such content, the listener must respond to the implicit emotional tone. A simple example would be if you asked how a friend was doing, and they responded in a monotone and with pain in their eyes: “I’m doing great.” Which message would you take as accurate?

The reflective listener would respond to their friend's evident sadness and distress. This is a crucial skill to master: the ability and willingness to confront negative emotions and deal with them constructively. This may involve the listener in a long conversation, where a simple “Don’t worry!” would not. However, unless those underlying negative emotions are dealt with, then although the initial listening may have been actively performed, it can still be ruined by a lack of reflection.

This does not mean assumptions should be made; this is responding from your frame of reference. You know that the last time you looked so miserable, something terrible had happened, so you assume that must be the case now. The friend in question may be doing great; they may have encountered an injury of some sort and been in pain. The only way to establish the truth would be to respond with a gentle challenge: “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You look like you’re suffering.”

Pitfalls to Avoid

Repetition in responses

Constantly using the same response can give the impression you are on autopilot. You should also avoid your responses being statements, such as, “You’re saying …” or “You feel …” It is better to respond with questions.

Pretending to understand

It is quite possible to get lost when listening to an emotional person. Emotions can muddle our thoughts and words. If you get lost, speak up and ask for clarification, or you may spend much time operating in ignorance or on a misconception.

Trying too hard

As much as you may want to help and feel that you have understood every nuance of the issue, resist the temptation to offer explanations beyond your knowledge base or the known facts. Amateur psychologists are a dime a dozen.

Not trying hard enough

Gauge the speaker’s emotions as best you can. Missing or devaluing key emotions may cause the speaker to clam up in frustration.

Rambling on

Keep your responses short. Remember that you should listen more than talk. Don’t mistake long-windedness for helpfulness.

Missing non-verbal messages

This is a massive mistake for the reasons already stated.

Conclusion

Anyone interested in improving their communication skills should understand how active listening differs from the listening they usually practice. Remember that there are two types of listening: active and not. Active listening is not some super-listening skill beyond the reach of mere mortals; it is a skill anyone can master if they are willing to accept a need for change in themselves and make the effort required.

Active listening is also not just a skill that belongs in a business or other professional environment; it is helpful for anyone who seeks to improve the quality of their communication with other people. Only when you listen actively will you realize how much you are missing.

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