Me: Are you an Active Listener?

Them: Huh?

Active Listening

Skills that will improve your relationships & engagement.

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What is Active Listening, exactly?

These are steps or communication techniques that provide reassurance to a speaker that you are attentive and understand their position/message.

Active listening is a well-known tactic in the field of psychology and used in fields where negotiation or conflict resolution is important.

It is useful from your personal friendships to your relationships with your partner, all the way up to hostage negotiations or worse.

Active listening is important because it allows the speaker to feel heard and sympathized with.

And as the listener gains more information, they can continue to build that bond with the speaker and begin to persuade or influence the outcome (good vs. evil).

Active listening is not only what happens between your ears and mouth.

It begins with your personal appearance and approach when dealing with someone.

These can be very subtle cues,
- maintaining eye contact,
- standing in a non-confrontational position,
- facial expressions.

Active Listening Skills.

So what are they and why do they matter?

1. Paraphrasing:

You repeat back the conversation in a concise manner for two reasons:

- speaker knows you heard them and are listening

- an opportunity for them to speak more and offer more information

2. Open-ended Questions:

Encourages the speaker to continue speaking.

Brings in more information.

"Tell me more about that...."

3. Encouragement Signals

Small cues used as the speaker is speaking to let them know you are listening and encourage them to continue.

"Oh, ok..."

"yup"

*Head-nods*

4. Reflecting or Mirroring:

Using words the speaking used to repeat back to them.
Or mirroring their body language.
How they are sitting or standing.
Smiling or sad.

You can do this by repeating the last phrase or a few words of their last sentence.

Helps continue the convo.

5. Emotional Connections

Allows the speaker to feel heard but also felt.
You acknowledge their emotions in a situation.

"I can imagine how you feel"
"You have the right to feel hurt"
"I am sorry you had to go through that situation"

6. Effective Pauses

This is the hardest for most.

Many dislike the dead-silence in a conversation, but they are really effective.

Silence can be very uncomfortable but it allows you to digest what you heard,

Think about what you are going to say,

then properly articulate it.

Have you used any of these lately? I would love to hear about it below.

Or, if there is any I left off which you have found to be effective, please let me know.

Otherwise, if you felt this was of value, please RT.