The different forms of listening

In my opinion, one of the most important skills of a human being is to listen and give feedback. Listening is an important skill, for example, to properly understand our colleagues or to learn new things. Too often we are not aware of the different ways of listening and the different perspectives that open up when we change the way we listen. But what are the different ways of "listening"?

Imagine you are leading a training or team development process and at the end you receive the following comment from one of the participants. "I didn't learn anything new today. I already knew everything. The motto is: "Waste of time!"

And yes, this feedback can be very moving and disturbing for A trainers. It can even make him question his work and approach. After all, at his best, he wants to be effective and make a push. In the face of such comments, he can tend to "take what is said literally" and, rethink his own offering - which in itself is not a bad thing. While self-reflection is a good weapon to increase one's value, it is also very biased to make a change based on oneself or a dissatisfied customer. It often makes more sense to analyze an issue from different angles before taking action. Therefore, I will introduce you to the different types of listening.

1. Pseudo-listening: This type of listening is used when you want to speak again, thinking that you can't speak again until your interlocutor has given his point of view. Most often, phrases such as: "I understand", "I agree with you, but ..." are used to signal to the interlocutor that he has been understood. In parallel, you are already preparing arguments to make your point understood. It is not important whether the other person has really been understood.

2) Receptive listening: In this type of listening, the attention is focused on the interlocutor. This is signaled by facial expressions, gestures and words. To make the interlocutor feel that he or she is being listened to, the body, eye contacts and encouraging nods are directed toward him or her. The other person's body language shows if he or she has been truly understood or if his or her thoughts have been followed.

3. Listening by paraphrasing: When not only the words of the interlocutor are taken in, but it is also possible to reproduce what has been said in one's own words, it is considered that a higher level of professional listening has been achieved. This is then referred to as "paraphrasing". The added value of this type of listening is that misunderstandings are avoided. At the same time, the interlocutor notices through the comments how much he still has to go into detail or explain the facts differently. Those who succeed in completely leaving out their own interpretations, opinions and advice have understood the art of paraphrasing.

3. Active listening: This type of listening establishes a relationship of trust between the interlocutor, the coach and the client, the doctor and the patient. While paraphrasing remains at the level of facts, "active listening" adds another dimension. The facts are not only recorded and described, but also include the emotions of the message and the feelings associated with it. However, one must be careful with interpretations. The message between the lines must not only be verbalized, but also reflected back to the interlocutor. Because often people understand something different despite using the same words. So you can see how your own opinion or point of view can have a big impact on the language. The challenge with active listening is that feedback relates to both facts and feelings - like a mirror. The most important technique to use here is to ask questions.

As you can see, listening and giving feedback is an essential skill. So the next time you get feedback that someone didn't learn anything new in your training, I encourage you to look at that feedback from different angles. Because one thing is clear: participants can see your content from different perspectives and hear it with very different internal orientations. We also believe that trying out different?