How can you improve team communication with active listening?

We heard it so many times: - listen to understand, not to prepare to answer - show your engagement into listening by verbal affirmations, verifying questions and non-verbal signs But honestly - how often do we catch ourselves on intense thinking about what we will say in our turn, getting through details of an answer we will deliver? Active listening is composed from 2 elements: - full attention to what is said - helping self to understand better, while showing counterpart the engagement into listening Finally, I once heard very smart statement. “The most interesting conversation partner is not one who knows a lot of exciting stories and speaks the most. This is one who listens carefully and shows the interest in a conversation. “

Why look any further than the father of active listening, Carl Rogers? The essence of active listening is summed up in his wise words: "The next time you get into an argument with your wife, or your friend, or with a small group of friends, just stop the discussion for a moment and for an experiment, institute this rule. 'Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction'." But if you were to go a step further, you could give people a reference point to measure themselves. Look no further than psychometrician Don Clifton's famous question, "How do you know you're good at listening?" "Well, the other person keeps talking."

All the key points have been made. Humility. Empathy. Curiosity. Respect. Renounce power. An example: I’m currently at a gathering in Northern Australia exploring partnership with Aboriginal elders (’traditional owners’) to advance ecological restoration of mined lands. Listening to and creating inclusive learning with people who carry millennia of knowledge yet who have been violated by colonization requires renunciation of deeply, mostly unconscious assumptions about one’s own identity. This requires doing the work to uncover these biases that limit our ability to truly listen. I appreciate the formulaic approaches listed above because we need memory aids and processes. Yet truly listening is a practice of self-inquiry.

Active listening is the art of listening, not with the ears, but with the heart. When everything about the speaker is felt in the heart of the listener, unspoken words are understood.

Active listening is not just about hearing what someone is saying, it's about truly understanding their perspective and using that understanding to build stronger relationships and drive better outcomes. By prioritizing active listening in team communication, we can create a culture of empathy, collaboration, and continuous improvement that will benefit the entire organization.

One great example of active listening comes from the my mother once told me when she said, "The Lord gave you twice as many ears and he did mouths, so listen twice as much as you talk". In other words be fast to listen but slow to talk. Many times I have been guilty of listening to some tell me a problem and I'm quick to respond with an answer, meanwhile most of the time the person didn't talk to you for a resolution, but an avenue for affirmation or to simply vent.

Leadership is quite different from management. As a leader, the team member should readily discern that you are keenly interested in them. You just have to feel their pain in your heart. When they see your facial expression, hear your thoughtful questions that manifest a genuine interest in them, they are more likely to be better productive as team members.

As a community leader, you should be actively listening and engaging the community. They should be involved in the decision making process. There's a range of emotions within communities so it's important to think as a group before making any sudden decisions. Create internal moderators, board members, or any form of community based leadership to enforce group decisions.

Active listening is giving your time and attention to the person speaking to you. It is time to just mute yourself, mute everything running in your head, mute your thoughts, mute your attempt to response and just listen. Listen to the person speaking, hearing their voice, feeling the words that's been spoken and truly understanding each word. One example is like how we pray if you're a believer. We can only hear ourselves speaking or mediating to God. We don't hear any immediate response, interruption or advice from him. And it feels so good afterward, because God just listen.

When practising active listening, it can be helpful to consider WAIT - Why Am I Talking? Is my attention fully on the person here? Am I asking them questions to help further understand something new to me? Have I started with an open mind? Am I providing a solution for them versus encouraging them to complete their thoughts?

Here are my tips for active listening: 1. Full Attention: Give your undivided attention when someone is speaking. Put away distractions and focus solely on the speaker. 2. Don’t Interrupt: Resist the urge to interrupt or complete other people's sentences. Allow them to express their thoughts fully. 3. Reflect and Validate: Reflect back what you’ve heard and validate the speaker’s feelings. This shows that you truly understand their perspective. 4. Ask Open-Ended Questions: Encourage the speaker to share more by asking questions that can't be answered with a simple 'yes' or 'no'. 5. Resist Problem-Solving: Instead of jumping to solutions, first, empathize with the speaker's feelings and experiences.

When it comes to you listening to your leader; if you have an issue, either at work or at home and your leader has listened to you first, understood what you are telling them, and let you finish what you want to say, then you are more likely to listen to your leader when it is their time to speak. Whatever their opinion or advice is on what you have just told them, you are more likely to respect, take on board, and take action on. This is the relationship between a great leader and their team members.

Here are some tips for active listening: 1. Give your full attention: Focus on the speaker and eliminate distractions. 2. Maintain eye contact: Show that you are engaged and interested in what they're saying. 3. Avoid interrupting: Let the speaker finish their thoughts before responding. 4. Use nonverbal cues: Nodding, smiling, and other gestures can show you're actively listening. 5. Ask open-ended questions: Encourage the speaker to elaborate and share more. 6. Paraphrase and summarize: Repeat back what you've heard to confirm understanding. 7. Show empathy: Try to understand the speaker's emotions and perspective. By practicing these tips, you can become a more effective active listener and improve your communication skills.

When I’m working on building or improving a skill, I find it helpful to ask others for help and support. That includes my direct reports. - Explain that you are working on active listening and ask them to remind you if you forget and interrupt. - Ask for feedback; “how did I do? Did you feel heard and supported? What could I do differently?”

Ways to practice active listening involve: 1. Slow down - mentally, verbally, physically 2. Realize not everyone is comfortable with direct eye-contact, especially those who are neurodivergent, so be mindful of thoughtfully acknowledging with appropriate body language. No one likes to feel they are on the receiving end of a laser beam. 3. When you repeat back what you thought you heard, see if you can accurately repeat back what you think they meant. These may not be the same words. 4. Always affirm with non-verbal cues such as nodding your head, smiling (if appropriate), and slightly under match the speaker's energy, as you should be deep in thought working to understand what they mean by what they are saying.

"Do you even understand what I'm saying?!" This is an expression (or, is it a question), that shows how much frustration team members get when they feel they're not heard with understanding. With active listening, team members have a feeling of being needed, wanted and appreciated, because they know that others empathize with them. A sense of belonging is thereby fostered by respect

Active Listening is an interpersonal skill so it helps in one-on-one situations, meetings, teams, etc. If team members could pause, take the energy to feed back their understanding, teams can get to solutions faster, with more trust in each other. If I know I won't be shut down or roadblocked when I challenge something or have an idea in a meeting, I am able to throw out ideas and insights without fear. Think of how many amazing ideas are out there but aren't shared due to an environment where people don't take the time to truly understand one another.

A leader would LISTEN FIRST, UNDERSTAND SECOND, AND SPEAK THIRD. A leader would listen to their leader and understand what it is that they are saying to them. If you were to do that by being the leader, then when it is your time to speak, your leader is a lot more likely to listen to you, and take on board what you have said. Then following that, you would feel like you have been listened to, feel cared for, and feel important to your leader.

I ask myself: * Does the speaker have to constantly ask if I understand? * Do I have to repeatedly ask them to come again? * Do I catch myself dozing off physically or mentally? * Do I time and again have to bring myself back into the discussion? If I answer yes to any of these questions, (and, of course, many others), then I haven't been listening with my heart

The person you're Active Listening to will tell you and show you if you're on the mark. If you Active Listen to something they said, and they respond with, "Well, no, it's not...." or "No, I meant I....", then that's immediate feedback that the listener is not tuned well enough. I as the Active Listener do not decide if I listened well--the other person does. And if I pay attention to their verbal and non-verbal signals, I will know where I am on track and where I'm not.

As you are learning to improve your leadership skills every day, this is one of the best leadership principles to try and master; listen first, understand second, and speak third. By learning this leadership principle myself and trying to master it every day of my life, it really has improved my leadership and my life, both as a leader and as a human being.

Active listening requires a concerted and direct effort to provide the speaker your full attention. It's not a time for multi-tasking. A large part of active listening is letting the speaker know you're hearing them fully. This means paying attention to your body language, eye contact, and if your responses are appropriate to the information being shared both verbally and physically. Lastly, active listening isn't only about listening. It's also about having a chance to respond. However, this requires emotional control because what you're hearing may be triggering to you. Be prepared to clarify, validate, and then respond appropriately.

Active listening requires presence of mind. It's like meditation in that it requires the ability to notice the thoughts in your head without becoming attached to them. In the process of active listening, a leader might notice their internal monologue calling them to "say the right answer" or "solve the problem." Just as we notice and release our thoughts in meditation, returning to the breath, the active listener notices their thoughts and continually returns focus to the person in the conversation. Embracing "not knowing" can be a powerful tool in these moments, deepening the leader's ability to be fully present to what is being said.