Career & Entrepreneurship
Improving your active listening skills
In today’s VUCA world, communication with people across cultures has become more important than ever, yet we seem to allocate less time to listening carefully to each other.
Active listening has become a critical skill for people to have to learn about others. It ensures understanding, building a strong rapport, resolving problems and conflicts, reducing errors and waste, and leading to effective communication. Developing listening skills can bring a series of benefits both in personal and professional life, enhancing interpersonal relationships, building careers, saving marriages and raising self-reliant children, teaching them to become problem-solvers.
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1. Make consistent eye contact with the speaker and give them your attention. Even when we have the best intentions, we can be easily distracted when listening to others or send signals that we are not listening at all. When talking to someone, limit distractions so that you can pay full attention to the other person. In Western
cultures, eye contact is considered a basic element of effective communication, contrary to other cultures, where eye contact is avoided due to shyness, uncertainty, face, cultural taboos or other emotions. Try to be focused as much as possible! It will show your interest and understanding.
2. Be present and attentive
Focus on the speaker’s message rather than their accent, speech mannerism, external activities, noise, or your own thoughts and feelings.
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3. Be non-judgemental
Active listening requires open-mindedness to new ideas, new perspectives, and new possibilities. Listen to your speaker without judging, hold any criticisms about the things they say or jump to conclusions. Try to stay neutral and be curious about what you will hear from them. If you fall into the trap of being judgemental, as a listener, you have comprised the effective communication.
4. Try to picture the message
Try to envision what the speaker is telling you and emphasize with them. When listening to long stories, focus on and remember keywords and phrases used by the speaker and engage in the conversation with those words.
5. Don’t interrupt
Interrupting can be seen as impolite and rude, limiting full understanding of the message and even frustrating the speaker. For instance, it may show that what we want to say is more important, accurate or relevant, jumping into conclusions without giving the speaker the time to express their opinion and show that we care
about what they think. When listening to someone’s problems or challenges, try to refrain from offering solutions or giving advice. Most of us prefer to identify our own solutions and what we need is to be listened. In some circumstances if you believe your ideas can help the speaker, you may ask their permission, asking them first if they would like to hear your opinion.
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6. Provide feedback
Show to your speaker that you empathize with their situation and show your understanding using appropriate facial expressions. Reflect on what has been said by paraphrasing, saying “I hear you saying that…” or “sounds like you are saying…” Regularly show indications that you are listening, nodding or saying “yes” to short points you agree with.
7. Pay attention to “what is not said”
Apart from the speaker’s words, pay attention to the non-verbal cues, i.e. nodding, eye contact, etc. Remember that words express only a fraction of the message and body language has a major role to play! Facing a person, you can understand their emotions, whether they are doing well, or they are bored, worried, or irritated.
Dealing with people’s emotions, being empathetical and trying to understand what others think or say require strong active listening skills. Being an attentive listener will not only improve your personal and professional
relationships, but will help you become a strong leader as well.
About the author:
Adelina Stefan – Career Coach, Intercultural Facilitator & Executive Consultant
Adelina is a licensed Career Coach and Intercultural Facilitator specialized in the areas of International Human Resource Management and Intercultural Communication. She helps expats professionals achieve clarity in their career goals, enabling them to increase their self- and intercultural awareness and formulate their unique career blueprint. Adelina is a dual citizen of Greece and Romania, and has lived in Zürich, Switzerland for the last five years. Holding a Master Degree in Sociolinguistics and Intercultural Communication, she also specializes in translations and interpreting, being fluent in English, Greek, Romanian and German.
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