8 basic points on how to improve active listening

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People are able to remember between 25% and 50% of what they hear (source: Keld Jensen, The Trust Factor: Negotiating in SMARTnership). This means that at least half of what you say to your employee, supervisor or partner will disappear into the unknown.

What if that was exactly the important part?
 

With proper active listening, a person can save many friendships, marriages or jobs.

Active versus passive listening

Active listening is intentional listening, where we actively make sure that we understand and correctly interpret not only the individual words, but also the meaning of the whole message. Accepting what we are told requires patience, energy and conscious decision.

For passive listening, words are just sounds in an environment that immediately evaporate from our heads.
 

Passive listening has several serious consequences:

• Failure to understand the cause-and-effect relationship will prevent us from understanding the whole.
• Asking several times in a row about something that has already been answered. A person who just listens passively will not catch the answer to his question. The result is an inability to process the information heard and link it to your question.
• Quick loss of attention. Misunderstood connections cause a person to stop concentrating and at the same time stop listening.

Steps to active listening

Keep eye contact with the narrator.
Keep body language open. Turn to the narrator not only with the face but also with the whole body. The person you are communicating with must feel that you are interested in listening. However, this does not mean constantly looking the communicator in the eye.
 

Be present in the spirit and give the listener all your attention.
Put away your cell phone, diary or other things that may distract you during the conversation. If you want to make an impression, turn off the ringtone in front of the narrator, or your mobile phone with the words that nothing will disturb you anymore and you are ready to listen to him or her.
 

Be open.
Listen without judgment, criticism, and hasty conclusions, especially when you have the urge to say something like, “That was a really stupid decision.” Remember that the narrator standing in front of you uses his own words to express his thoughts and feelings. The only way to understand them is to listen to him. Therefore, it is important to detach oneself from one's thoughts and prejudices.
 

Don't interrupt. Let the narrator finish the idea.
Speeding up a conversation by finishing the sentences of others is distracting. You let the narrator know that what you want to carry carries more weight than his thoughts. You need to take the time to think about what the person wants to say. If you really need to interrupt the narrator and not offend him, it is advisable to use one of the following phrases: “Excuse me. One moment please. Can I suggest something? Could we talk about solutions?” Or, wait for a break before asking clarification questions.
 

Embrace the feelings of others
Empathy is the soul and heart of listening. If you express the same emotions in words and facial expressions as the narrator is experiencing, you will strengthen him in understanding him. Walking in the shoes of others is not easy at all. It mainly requires a lot of concentration and imagination. Therefore, it is good to associate the narrator's words with ideas and add emotions into the conversation.
 

Regular feedback
Show your understanding by expressing the narrator’s feelings – “You must be scared” or “I see you are confused”. Or if you can't define what's going on in his or her head, sometimes paraphrase what's not clear to you. In this case, listeners sometimes nod when they are accompanied by an occasional and agreeing "murmur" that may not automatically express your consent, but only that you are listening. The goal is to prove that you are following the narrator's thought processes.
 

Pay attention to body language
The spoken word is only a small part of our communication. The rest takes place at the level of facial expressions, gestures, postures, overall appearance and tone of voice. These signals can tell you to what extent the words match the narrator's emotions.
 

Summarize
The last step you can take to tell the narrator that you understand him is to summarize the main thoughts and arguments in your words.
 

The benefits of active listening

By actively listening, you build trust around you, whether in your private or professional life. In addition, you can gain new information that can make it easier for you to understand a certain issue when you least expect it. Therefore, it is good to realize that as an active listener, it is you who is responsible for where the conversation goes.