You can improve your listening if you

Published on March 9th, 2022

Published on March 9th, 2022

by Fran

Listening skills affect every aspect of our lives. Improve your work and personal life by learning how to listen better.

If you can develop the art of listening well, you could stand to improve every area of your life – be that professional, academic, social or personal. In this article, we’ll cover why listening skills are so important; why they’re difficult to cultivate; how to improve them and how to listen mindfully.

Communication is important to everyone – whether it’s your friends, family, coworkers, or even the random strangers you interact with during your day. However, different people communicate in different ways, making it important to understand these differences.

In today’s high-tech culture, communication is more crucial than ever, but people are spending less and less time truly listening to one another. Genuine listening is becoming rarer, even though it is crucial for developing relationships, addressing problems, ensuring understanding, settling disagreements, and increasing accuracy. When you listen well at work, you make fewer mistakes and waste less time. Good listening promotes the growth of resourceful, self-sufficient employees who can also solve problems in their personal lives. The ability to listen enriches all aspects of one’s life.

Listening is a skill that many of us take for granted. People frequently hear what is being said, but hearing is not the same as listening. To listen, we must make a conscious effort to not just hear but also absorb, digest, and understand what others are saying.

Of course, those with hearing loss or impairment may struggle with certain aspects of communication, so when we discuss listening skills, it’s important to remember that it’s a two-way process. Good communication skills mean considering the other person’s situation and needs. 

Listening not only improves your capacity to understand and communicate but can also make other people’s experience of conversing with you more pleasurable.

• Obstacles to good listening
• What is active listening?
• How can you improve your active listening skills?
  • 1. Consider eye contact
  • 2. Be alert, but not intense
  • 3. Pay attention to nonverbal signs, such as body language and tone
  • 4. Make a mental image of what the speaker is saying
  • 5. Empathise with the speaker
  • 6. Provide feedback
  • 7. Keep an open mind
• Using mindfulness to improve listening skills
  • What is mindful listening?
  • How to listen mindfully
• Final thoughts

Obstacles to good listening

Distractions are everywhere: television, radio, traffic noise, telephones, laptops, and more, making it difficult to listen with complete focus. Furthermore, when we do listen, we are prone to listening on autopilot, nodding and agreeing without truly understanding what is being said. While the other person is speaking, we may interrupt, dominate the conversation, or plan our next words. If someone’s viewpoint differs from ours, we can be quick to judge them.

Self-interest maintains our own demands and thoughts in the forefront of our minds, pushing the speaker to the back of our minds. Prejudice, prior experiences, personal agendas, and negative self-talk can all lead to a self-centred mindset.

Communication might also be hampered by psychological barriers – such as making inaccurate assumptions, providing unsolicited counsel or analysis, denial, and feelings of fear, apathy, jealousy, or defensiveness.

What is active listening?

Active listening does not come easily to us, so we must make a conscious effort to practise it. It takes time to master and a lot of practice to become adept. Active listening is completely focusing on what is being said and absorbing it without bias, as opposed to simply glossing over the general message.

How can you improve your active listening skills?

1. Consider eye contact

Holding someone’s gaze can feel like hitting a moving target: someone’s talking to you, but you’re looking around the room, checking your phone, or staring at your screen. In many cases, the speaker may only have a small part of your attention. You don’t want to make the speaker have to ask you to look at them, as if you were a child.

In most Western cultures, eye contact is a fundamental part of good communication – bear in mind, though, that in cultures such as Japan and Korea it can come across as forceful and rude. Similarly, some neurodiverse people may find persistent eye contact difficult. It’s important to understand your audience/speaker and their needs.

However, for many people, we communicate by looking each other in the eye. That’s not to suggest you can’t converse across a room; but if it goes on for too long, one of you will get up and move in order to hear the other properly.

Turn to face your conversation partner out of politeness. Remove all papers, books, phones, and other distracting items. Look at your partner, even if they aren’t looking at you. Shyness, uncertainty, embarrassment, guilt, or other feelings, as well as cultural taboos, can prohibit certain people from making eye contact in particular situations. You can forgive them – but for your part, stay attentive.

2. Be alert, but not intense

Now that you’ve made eye contact, relax into the conversation. You don’t have to fix your eyes on the other person; in fact, being too attentive or intense can unsettle the speaker. Although, again, some people may need this regular contact to follow the conversation. Overall, it’s useful to pay attention in a way that suits you.

You should try and consciously shut out background sounds and activities. Also, try not to focus too much on the speaker’s accent or mannerisms, as they might be distracting. Try not to allow your personal sentiments, beliefs, or biases to get in the way.

3. Pay attention to nonverbal signs, such as body language and tone

Nonverbal communication, excluding email, accounts for the majority of direct communication. We can get a lot of information about one another without needing to say anything. The sound and tone of someone’s voice, even over the phone, can convey almost as much about them as what they say.

An expression around the eyes, a twist of the mouth, or a raising of one’s shoulders can indicate enthusiasm, boredom, or disapproval when you’re face to face with someone. You can’t afford to disregard these cues. Remember that words only convey part of the message.

Again, it’s important to point out that body language can vary between cultures, and neurotypical people may find it easier to pick up on than some neurodiverse individuals. 

4. Make a mental image of what the speaker is saying

Allow your brain to create a mental image of the information you’re hearing. Your brain will do the work – whether it’s a mental picture or the organisation of ideas – if you stay focused and your senses are fully engaged. When listening for long periods of time, concentrate on and remember key words and phrases.

Don’t think about what you’re going to say when it’s your turn to listen; it’s too difficult to mentally rehearse while listening. Pay complete attention to what the other person is saying. Finally, remember what is being said, even if it seems dull or unimportant. Make a conscious effort to refocus your thoughts when they begin to wander.

5. Empathise with the speaker

Effective listening is based on empathy and emotional intelligence. You’re a good listener if you’re sad when the person you’re talking to displays sadness, glad when they express happiness, and fearful when they express their concerns. You can show this through your facial expressions and words.

To have empathy, you must put yourself in the other person’s shoes and allow yourself to feel what it’s like to be them at that moment. This is difficult to achieve and requires a great deal of effort and concentration. Regardless, it will enhance the quality of your interactions to no end.

6. Provide feedback

Reflect the speaker’s emotions to demonstrate that you understand their point of view. If the speaker’s emotions are masked or unclear, it’s occasionally important to repeat their message to ensure you’ve understood. Simply nod and demonstrate your understanding with appropriate facial gestures and well-timed noises of assent.

You need to show the speaker that you are following their train of thought rather than daydreaming while they are speaking to you. Always double-check your understanding of instructions in task situations, whether at work or at home.

7. Keep an open mind

Listen without casting judgement or mentally evaluating what the other person is saying. Feel free to be uncomfortable if what they say makes you uncomfortable, but don’t engage in internal discourse, such as formulating a riposte or comparing the speaker to others. As soon as you indulge in judgemental thinking, you’ve diminished your value as a listener.

Listen without jumping to conclusions. Keep in mind that the speaker is expressing their inner thoughts and feelings through words. You have no idea what those feelings and ideas are; the only way to learn is to listen.

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