The Art of Listening

Listening is one of the most challenging skills because we all rush to speak rather than listen. We want people to listen to us; impose our ideas on people rather than empathize; and be defensive rather than accept our flaws. You can only negotiate effectively once you become a good listener. Advising someone on personal or career issues will only be effective with active listening. You can only be a good manager if you are a good listener. It would be difficult to understand the problems and contexts, but you will be assuming and reactive instead if you do not listen well.

Joanne Yates gives good tips on how to be an active listener and how to respond reflectively. To be an active listener, you must be interested in what the person says and show it; you must also look at things from the speaker’s perspective and clarify the speaker’s thoughts and feelings.

Be interested in what the person says: You must maintain frequent eye contact- avoid distractions like pressing your phones, playing with your pen etc. Your body behaviour also indicates your interest in what the person is saying. A short vocalization like ‘Oh yes”; ‘’i agree with that line of thought’ etc., could depict that you are interested in what the person is saying. 

See things from the speaker’s perspective: First, do not assume you know everything the person wants to tell you.- so do not interrupt when he is speaking. This is not the time to corroborate his point with another story of yours or to disagree with his line of thoughts. Don’t just pay attention to the words alone but also the feelings of the terms words. Listening is not just about what was said but also about many things that were not said.. 

Clarifying the speaker’s thoughts and feelings: At this stage, you should limit you’re talking only to things that will help you gain additional information or context from the speaker. Ask the speaker open-ended questions like, “How do you feel about X” and “Tell me more about Y” and not questions that he can easily answer in a monosyllable way. 

Reflective Response.

Responding reflectively is a step above active listening. You must be an excellent listener to respond actively, but more than being a good listener is needed. Reflective response means responding to what the speaker says and doesn’t say to get more information, perception and objectives. A speaker often only wants to tell you something that will make him feel good and will only reveal information that will meet that objective to you- trying to probe for the underlying cause could throw another angle to the discussion. Sometimes, the speaker doesn’t know what he wants from the conversation; you must help him by asking relevant questions to engage in the objective. The writer listed three key themes that can help you to provide reflective responses: 

• Reflect on the speaker’s thoughts and feelings: Two things are essential here: restate what you think the speaker has said. “Did you say you were home alone when this happened”? Beyond that, discuss the feelings you have heard or inferred from the discussion. You need a bit of tact here because you may not be right about the sense oemotioemotions. For instance, “When you lost your job, did you feel angry about yourself for not doing something right, or did you feel that your manager wasn’t fair in his assessment?” 
• Respond rather than lead the conversation: You need to stay within the speaker’s frame of reference and not lead him into new areas of interest to you. 
• Respond to feelings and not just the content: Content is as important as feelings. Two people can say the same thing but mean different things. Rather than just seek for more information about why someone’s result has been abysmal, you may ask questions like your disposition to his poor result. The response might determine whether he is giving you the information to weed the person out of the team or to help him genuinely. 

The writer concluded by saying this is different from the approach used in every conversation, but this is needed just for context setting. Context setting, in this sense, refers to having enough information required for decision-making, understanding the feelings and why of the discussion and when the speaker is very sure of his feelings or objectives. After establishing these premises, you can use another approach, like being directional, aggressive, or persuasive. At this stage, you can speak from both the speaker’s perspective and your perspective.