How to Harness the Power of Active Listening in 5 Simple Steps

Whether you are a leader, a manager, a sales person, or maybe you are networking for business, by harnessing the power of active listening you can increase your personal effectiveness and productivity many times over. This article looks at the power of listening and proposes 5 simple steps with which you can improve it.

There's a wise old phrase I am fond of quoting to my students, which is often attributed to Epectitus, the Greek philosopher:

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Its message concerning the merits of listening more than speaking is very simple, but despite the common sense of Epectitus' words, we are probably all too familiar with the sales person who is more interested in telling us the various features of the car, rather than finding out what we need. Or the guy from marketing who seems over-fond of his own voice and dominates the discussions in the planning meetings, rather than allows others a chance to speak.

Why are good listening skills important?

Most people accept that good listening is important and an invaluable skill to master, but too few of us actually practice it well. Too often the person we are talking to is merely looking for another opportunity to jump in with more facts, details, or opinions, rather than to fully engage with what the other person is saying and in order to create a genuine dialogue, rather than just a couple of disconnected monologues.

Talking too much is often encouraged in a society that prizes extrovertism over introvertism, but the introvert often gathers more information from the other person than they glean from them. The manager or sales person who can listen will gather more of value and magnify their effectiveness many times over, with just a few simple changes to their behaviour.

How do we achieve active listening?

While many of us concentrate upon improving our public speaking or writing skills, too few of us would consider brushing up on our listening abilities, but here are 5 steps to help you do just that:

Step #1: Am I talking more than listening?

Next time you are engaged in a suitable conversation, you might like to do a quick audit and ask yourself whether you are speaking more than the other person, or if they are talking more than you. If you felt that the balance of the conversation was tilted more towards you doing most of the speaking, what did you learn from the other person? If, on the other hand, you felt the other person dominated the conversation, did you gain anything of value and how did you feel about being talk at, rather than conversed with? You probably have some sense of the answer to this question already, but gaining a little self-awareness of how much we talk and how much we listen is a good first exercise in improving our listening skills.

Step #2: Don't prejudge the other person

It is all to easy to hear things that the other person may not have actually said and this often comes from jumping to conclusions about someone, whether that is based upon prejudice, of whatever kind, stereotyping, or labelling someone as 'boring', 'shy', or just 'not worth talking to'. You need to keep an open mind, rather than be too quick to make judgements about what you are hearing, or about the person themselves, because this is a quick route to misinterpret, misunderstand, or selectively tune-out things that the other person is saying. I once went to a presentation in which suppliers were invited to find out more about the company, before they made their pitch. It turned out that the old gentleman sitting at the back of the room was actually the majority shareholder and founder of the business, which I discovered from conversing and listening, while none of my other competitors ever even spoke with him.

Step #3: Empathize

In Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Atticus tells Scout about empathizing with other people:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Once you have considered your own communications tendencies in Step #1, empathizing is about gaining an understanding of the other person's perspective - where are they coming from? What is their motivation and their feelings? If you can gain some insight into their circumstances - and 'climb into their skin' a little - you may be better able to understand the context of what they are saying and why they are saying it. If you are a sales person, for example, then this kind of insight is invaluable and well worth the time in trying to gain this empathetic understanding - and listening will help you achieve this more often than talking.

Step #4: Active Listening

Just listening isn't sufficient in itself, as Stephen Covey, the author of, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, said:

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Focus on the person your are speaking with and maintain eye contact, which helps to convince them that you are actually listening. And focus on the substance of what they are saying, don't be distracted by the style, whether that is poor grammar, a strong accent, or even the wrong choice of words - the message may still be worth receiving. Keep asking clarifying questions, if there are things you have misunderstood, and then sum up at the end, perhaps by paraphrasing their main points: "So I think I have understood what you are saying, you said that ... is that right?"

Step #5: Observe the body language and the non-verbal cues

Management guru and writer, Peter Drucker, said:

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

Drucker makes a powerful point, because over two-thirds of the meaning that we gain from what someone is saying comes from their non-verbal communication, i.e. their body language - the thing that 'isn't said'. Body language is a huge topic in itself, but try and ensure that you watch for those gestures and expressions, we have spent a lifetime observing these things in other people, so don't ignore them in trying to actively listen and understand. And remember that certain gestures and expressions may hold different meanings in other cultures.

Active listening requires some practice if it doesn't come too easily to you. At least take the plunge with Step #1 and think about whether you are talking more than you are listening and weigh up whether you are missing more than you would have gained by speaking less.

Happy listening.

Will Trevor is the the Principal of York School of Business, offering sales and marketing qualifications via online distance learning. Please click ‘Follow’ if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email:[email protected]

Learn more about our sales and marketing qualifications at York School of Business: www.yorkschoolofbusiness.com

References:

Hitt, M., Black, J., & Porter, L., (2012) Management, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.