What is active listening?

Active listening involves

• Giving serious attention
• Withholding comment
• Checking back
• Clarifying
• Building
• Supporting
• Summarizing

Active listening is a pro active activity, which when carried out correctly, is surprisingly hard work.

Giving serious attention

Most people are highly skilled at listening with one ear whilst thinking their own thoughts, or carrying out an additional task or activity. Very few people are highly skilled at giving serious attention to the speaker.

Giving serious attention involves:

• Focusing on what is being said, to the exclusion of everything else
• Listening to the words and noticing the tone of voice
• Observing the non-verbal communication – how the speaker is communicating through their body language – and observing whether both are congruent. Do the words and body postures match, or is there a mismatch? Are the speakers words saying one thing, whilst the speaker’s non verbal communication is saying something entirely different?

Withholding comment

One of the skills of active, effective listening is the ability to listen quietly to what is being said without jumping – in, taking – over or otherwise interrupting the flow of words being spoken.

• Skilled listeners allow the speakers to have their say, and then respond
• Unskilled listeners tend to listen to half of what is said, form a swift judgement, and then respond with their own ideas, views, opinions and suggestions

Checking back

Skilled listeners, at appropriate points in the conversation, check back with the speaker by re stating what has been said so far. This helps the listener to:

• Make sure that they have properly understood what has been said
• Demonstrate to the speaker that they are listening and are giving serious attention

Clarifying

Clarifying involves asking clarifying questions to cover up any grey areas. The skilled, pro active listener asks questions to clarify any points which he or she finds confusing and difficult to understand.

Building

Building involves further developing the other person’s argument or position. For example:

• ‘Right! So if we cut the original development time to two days instead of three, as you suggest, then perhaps we could ask that time to prepare the team. What do you think?’
• ‘so you think we should stop production mid November…that makes sense, and then we could start rolling with the new designs before the 1st of December.

Supporting

Supporting involves showing the other person, through your attention, encouraging comments and non- judgemental approach, which you find what they are saying interesting, valuable, valid and worth listening to.

Summarising

Skilled listeners take the opportunity, at appropriate points in the conversation, to summarized what has been said and agreed. This is often done:

• when one topic of conversation has been thoroughly explored and dealt with, and it is time to move on to the next
• at the end of the conversation

Excerpts from The University of Leicester Diploma in Management – offered via Resource Development International (RDI) Jamaica (www.rdijamaica.com)