Becoming an active, engaged listener first requires you to assume that you’re not as good at listening as you might think. There are a number of elements involved in active listening:
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is doing little more than restating what you’ve just been told. It has many purposes:
As a means of clarifying what you heard;
As a way to confirm what you heard;
To make it known to the speaker that you are in fact listening.
Examples
Important! Paraphrasing is not an opportunity to manipulate meaning. In logic and arguments, paraphrasing can quickly devolve into a fallacy when done as a means of restating another’s opinion so that it favors your own. For instance, a person says, “Tax cuts are the best solution to the current economic crisis”, it is a logical fallacy known as a ‘straw man’ to respond by saying, “So according to you, cutting taxes and depriving our communities of adequate emergency services will solve all our problems.”
In short, when you paraphrase take caution to faithfully interpret what the other person has said.
Asking Questions
By asking questions, you show the person speaking that you are in fact listening to what they are saying (unless your question has already been answered—in which case, you show the opposite). Asking questions is also a good way of retaining the information you are being told, it helps to reiterate the point the speaker is making, sometimes in more comprehensive terms.
Open-ended questions attempt to explore the speaker’s point-of-view and they tend to encourage a thoughtful response; consequently they tend to be more objective and less leading. Such questions might begin with:
• “What do you mean by …?”
• “Tell me about…?”
• “What do you think …?”
• “Why is it …?”
Closed-ended questions (sometimes referred to as yes/no questions) elicit a brief, often single-word response. They don’t tend to encourage conversation—in fact they can often bring it to a halt.
Using Body Language
As a listener, your body language has the potential to communicate to the speaker a variety of different reactions and emotions.
Eye Contact: Perhaps no body language is more important when you want to communicate that you’re listening than maintaining eye contact.
Expressions: The same holds true for facial expressions. Showing surprise, disgust, enlightenment, aide the speaker by letting him or her know that their words are reaching you.
Posture: Be sure to be facing the speaker standing upright. Slouching not only looks bad, and can cause us to be a hunch-back, but communicates a lack of interest.
More Listening Skills Articles
Learn more about Speech & Communication
Watch Speech Videos
