Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to understand, interpret, and evaluate what they hear. The ability to listen actively can improve personal relationships through reducing conflicts, strengthening cooperation, and fostering understanding.
When interacting, people often are not listening attentively. They may be distracted, thinking about other things, or thinking about what they are going to say next (the latter case is particularly true in conflict situations or disagreements). Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding to others, focusing attention on the speaker. Suspending one's own frame of reference, suspending judgment and avoiding other internal mental activities are important to fully attend to the speaker.
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There are three primary elements that comprise active listening: comprehending, retaining, and responding.
Comprehension is "shared meaning between parties in a communication transaction".[1][2] This is the first step in the listening process. The first challenge for the listener is accurately identifying speech sounds and understanding and synthesizing these sounds as words. We are constantly bombarded with auditory stimuli, so the listener has to select which of those stimuli are speech sounds and choose to pay attention to the appropriate sounds (attending). The second challenge is being able to discern breaks between discernable words, or speech segmentation.[3] This becomes significantly more difficult with an unfamiliar language because the speech sounds blend together into a continuous cluster. Determining the context and meanings of each word is essential to comprehending a sentence.
This is the second step in the listening process. Memory is essential to the listening process because the information we retain when involved in the listening process is how we create meaning from words. We depend on our memory to fill in the blanks when we're listening. Because everyone has different memories, the speaker and the listener may attach different meanings to the same statement. However, our memories are fallible and we can't remember everything that we've ever listened to. There are many reasons why we forget some information that we've received. The first is cramming. When you cram there is a lot of information entered into your short term memory. Shortly after cramming, when you don't need the information anymore, it is purged from your brain before it can be transferred into your long term memory.[4] The second reason is that you aren't paying attention when you receive the information. Alternatively, when you receive the information you may not attach importance to it, so it loses its meaning. A fourth reason is at the time the information was received you lacked motivation to listen carefully to better remember it.[5] Using information immediately after receiving it enhances information retention and lessens the forgetting curve (the rate at which we no longer retain information in our memory).[6] Retention is lessened when we engage in mindless listening, where little effort is made to listen to a speaker's message. Mindful listening is active listening.
Listening is an interaction between speaker and listener. It adds action to a normally passive process. The speaker looks for verbal and nonverbal responses from the listener to determine if the message is being listened to. Usually the response is nonverbal because if the response is verbal the speaker/listener roles are reversed so the listener becomes the speaker and is no longer listening. Based on the response the speaker should either adjust or continue with his/her communication style.
It is important for a listener to observe the speaker's behavior and body language. Having the ability to interpret a person's body language lets the listener develop a more accurate understanding of the speaker's message.[7] When the listener does not respond to the speaker's nonverbal language, (s)he engages in a content-only response which ignores the emotions that guide the message. Having heard, the listener may then paraphrase the speaker's words. It is important to note that the listener is not necessarily agreeing with the speaker—simply stating what was said. In emotionally charged communications, the listener may listen for feelings. Thus, rather than merely repeating what the speaker has said, the active listener might describe the underlying emotion ("You seem to feel angry," or "You seem to feel frustrated, is that because ... ?").
Individuals in conflict often contradict each other. This has the effect of denying the validity of the other person's position. Ambushing occurs when we listen to someone else’s argument for its weaknesses and ignore its strengths.[8] The purpose is to attack the speaker’s position and support your own. This may include a distortion of the speaker’s argument to gain a competitive advantage. Either party may react defensively, and they may lash out or withdraw. On the other hand, if one finds that the other party understands, an atmosphere of cooperation can be created. This increases the possibility of collaborating and resolving the conflict.
In the book Leader Effectiveness Training, Thomas Gordon, who coined the term "active listening,"[9] states "Active listening is certainly not complex. Listeners need only restate, in their own language, their impression of the expression of the sender. ... Still, learning to do Active Listening well is a rather difficult task ..."[10]
A four-step process (termed "Nonviolent Communication" or "NVC")—conceived by Marshall Rosenberg—can help facilitate active listening. "When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed [and requested] rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC fosters respect, attentiveness, and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart."[11] Rosenberg further clarifies the intricacy of perception and adaptiveness of what he calls "deep listening" by saying, "While I conveniently refer to NVC as a 'process' or 'language,' it is possible to express all four pieces of the model without uttering a single word. The essence of NVC is to be found in our consciousness of these four components, not in the actual words that are exchanged."[12] Suzanne Jones sees a substantive difference between active listening as originated by Gordon and empathic listening as recommended by Rosenberg, insofar as active listening involves a specific step of reflecting what a speaker said to let them know you are listening, whereas empathic listening involves an ongoing process of listening with both heart and mind and being fully present to the other's experience, with an aim of comprehending and empathizing with the needs of the other, the meaning of the experience for that person.[13]
Active listening is used in a wide variety of situations, including public interest advocacy, community organizing, tutoring,[14] medical workers talking to patients,[15] HIV counseling,[16] helping suicidal persons,[17] management,[18] counseling and journalistic settings. In groups it may aid in reaching consensus. It may also be used in casual conversation to build understanding, though this can be interpreted as condescending.
A listener can use several degrees of active listening, each resulting in a different quality of communication. The active listening chart below shows the three main degrees of listening: repeating, paraphrasing and reflecting.
The benefits of active listening include getting people to open up, avoiding misunderstandings, resolving conflict, and building trust. In a medical context, benefits may include increased patient satisfaction,[15] improved cross-cultural communication,[19] improved outcomes,[15] or decreased litigation.[20]
Active listening can be lifted by the active listening observation scale.[21]
All elements of communication, including listening, may be affected by barriers that can impede the flow of conversation. Such barriers include distractions, trigger words, vocabulary, and limited attention span.[22]
Listening barriers may be psychological (e.g. emotions) or physical (e.g. noise and visual distraction). Cultural differences including speakers' accents, vocabulary, and misunderstandings due to cultural assumptions often obstruct the listening process.
Frequently, the listener's personal interpretations, attitudes, biases, and prejudices lead to ineffective communication.
The first of these is the shift response which is the general tendency in a conversation to affix the attention to you. There is competition between individuals for attention and a focus on self by shifting the topic; it is a me-oriented technique. The listener shifts from a passive position, receiver, to an active role, sender. This is a type of conversational narcissism; the tendency of listeners to turn the topic of conversations to themselves without showing sustained interest in other's listening.[23] With conversational narcissism there is a tendency to overuse the shift response and underuse the support response. A support response is the opposite of a shift response; it is an attention giving method and a cooperative effort to focus the conversational attention on the other person. Instead of being me-oriented like shift response, it is we-oriented.[24] It is the response most likely to be used by a competent communicator[25]
Interrupting is what happens when one person stops speaking because another person starts speaking.[26] Competitive interrupting is "when we dominate the conversation by seizing the floor from others who are speaking".[27] Both the original speaker and the interrupter fight for control of the conversation. This is similar to a shift response and can be used in the same way. However, a shift response follows the rule that one person speaks at a time while in competitive interrupting you don’t wait for the other person to finish talking. Also, with shift responses the topic usually changes while with competitive interrupting the interrupter may make a point that is on topic. Interrupting may create an environment of hostility and rivalry. In general, competent communicators try to avoid interrupting in their conversation. However, there are noncompetitive reasons for interrupting such as a show of support or enthusiasm, or asking for clarification.
Glazing over occurs when the listener’s attention wanders from the speaker’s message and they begin to daydream.[28] The listener does not even pretend to listen to the speaker’s message. In general the brain processes words faster than people can speak,[29] so a competent communicator will use the difference between the rate of speaking and processing to think about the conveyed message.[28] Pseudolistening on the other hand is pretend listening; the listener uses the ‘polite listening face’ but nothing really registers. However, competent listening requires focused attention. We don’t remember what we haven’t focused our attention on.
This is when talking is seen to be more valuable than listening by the speaker. The speaker does not allow for listening as a personal communication style.
To use the active listening technique to improve interpersonal communication, one puts personal emotions aside during the conversation, asks questions and paraphrases back to the speaker to clarify understanding, and one also tries to overcome all types of environment distractions. Don't judge or argue prematurely. Furthermore, the listener considers the speaker's background, both cultural and personal, to benefit as much as possible from the communication process. Eye contact and appropriate body languages are also helpful. It is important to focus on what the speaker is saying; at times you might come across certain key words which will certainly help you understand the speaker. The stress and intonation will also keep you active and away from distractions. Taking notes on the message will aid in retention.
There are several misconceptions about listening. The first of these is listening and hearing are the same thing. Hearing is the physiological process of registering sound waves as they hit the eardrum. We have no control over what we hear. The sounds we hear have no meaning until we give them their meaning in context. Listening on the other hand is an active process that constructs meaning from both verbal and nonverbal messages.[30] It involves a lot of interpretation by the listener to reconstruct a message that is like the one that the speaker intended to send. The second is that listening is a natural process. However, we have been hearing since birth, not listening. Listening is a skill that is acquired over a lifetime. The third misconception is listening requires no effort; as a mental skill - not dissimilar from learning long division - listening requires practice and attention. Much of this effort occurs in childhood during language development and continues as an individual's comprehension of interpersonal interactions increases. Like any skill, the more you practice listening the better you get at it and the three steps that comprise it.