How to Become a Good Listener

Listening is the ability of a person to accurately receive and interpret messages in communication. But with evolving technology at our fingertips, has listening attentively to another person become a thing of the past?

Most of us nowadays get distracted within a few minutes of a conversation. A survey was done by The Pew Research Centre in America on about 2,500 teachers. In the survey, 87 percent of the teachers felt that modern technology was causing easily distracted youngsters with lower attention spans.

With these statistics in mind, I think we as a generation need to focus more on the people in front of us rather than on a screen. Don’t you think so? Especially when good listening skills are such an important trait to have.

Just listening to the people around you can build relationships, solve problems, shelter understandings and improve precision in your everyday life. At the office or school, listening will help decrease errors in your work, and at home, it will help raise respectful understanding children. To be a good listener there are a few tricks we can follow:

Look At the Person Talking

Keeping eye contact with the person who is speaking shows that you are interested in what is being said rather than looking at the surrounding environment. This also shows that you are observant of the other person and will notice a change in topic, voice, expressions or emotions.

Block Out Other Disturbances

Any background noise like the television playing in the next room or a child talking somewhere else should not interfere with your power to listen. If a person is talking to you, make a conscious effort to listen with your full attention. Even your own thoughts can sometimes be distracting and leave you with unfair biases about the speaker. Keep a clear mind and try to concentrate on what is being said by the other person.

Don’t Judge Unfairly

Some of us might listen to a bit of the story and our mind might wander off and make up the rest, resulting in us judging the speaker unfairly without actually listening to the whole story. We might draw our own conclusions and this might lead to a misunderstanding of facts. Try to keep an open mind and wait till you hear the whole story before forming any conclusions.

Try Not to Cut the Other Person off Midway

This might be the hardest of all especially if you completely disagree with what the other person is saying. But it only disrupts their thought flow and will cause them to get irritated faster. Try to wait till the person is done talking his/her part before you share your feelings.

When you are Listening, Picture the Story

Try to place yourself in their shoes for the whole duration of the speech and picture what exactly the speaker is trying to convey in his/her message. If you are sitting through a long speech, try to pick up some key words and phrases that the speaker uses rather than remember whole sentences.

When it Comes to Someone’s Problems the Best Advice is Silence

Most people just need a person to listen to their problems rather than giving advice on how to solve them. If you do have any advice to give, wait till the person is through with expressing themselves completely before you speak. Or instead of giving advice as direct statements frame it in such a way that you are asking them a question. What if it was this way, not that? This gives the other person the chance at self-reflection and the confidence that you are actually interested in the topic and genuinely want to help.

Work on your Body Language

Body Language can really do a lot to show a person’s feelings. Smile if the tone calls for it, sympathize if needed, or show concern when required. If you have inviting body language, people will tend to open up to you more, as lack of attention can clearly be seen in the way we conduct ourselves. If you want to make a person realize your interest, adapt to the person’s appearance, personality and delivery of speech.

Practice

Practice actively listening to the people around you for a few minutes every day to start off with. You will be surprised at how much you will notice about another person just by listening to them. Keep in mind; listening is not the same as hearing. While the latter means the sound coming into and out of your ears, the former means understanding that sound and its meaning or cause.

Did you know that on an average, adults spend about 70 percent of their time engaged in some form of communication? Out of this 45 percent is spent on listening (Adler, R. et al. 2001). With figures like that we should definitely learn the art of being good listeners.

As Bernard M. Baruch said,

“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking”.