Active listening

Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to feed back what he hears to the speaker, by way of re-stating or paraphrasing what he has heard in his own words, to confirm what he has heard and moreover, to confirm the understanding of both parties. The ability to listen actively demonstrates sincerity, and that nothing is being assumed or taken for granted. Active listening is most often used to improve personal relationships, reduce misunderstanding and conflicts, strengthen cooperation, and foster understanding. It is proactive, accountable and professional.

When interacting, people often "wait to speak" rather than 'hear' attentively. They might also be distracted. Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding to others, focusing attention on the "function" of communicating objectively as opposed to focussing on "forms," passive expression or subjectivity.

There are many opinions on what is "active listening." A search of the term reveals interpretations of the "activity" as including "interpreting body language" or focussing on something other than words. Successful communication is the establishment of common ground between two people—understanding. Agreeing to disagree is common ground. Common ground can be false, i.e., a person says they feel a certain way but they don't. Nevertheless it is common ground, once accepted as understood. Dialogue, understanding and progress can only arise from that common ground. And that common ground cannot be established without respect for the words as spoken by the speaker, for whatever reason.

Thus the essence of active listening is as brutally simple as it is effective: paraphrasing the speakers words back to them as a question. There is little room for assumption or interpretation. It is functional, mechanical and leaves little doubt as to what is meant by what is said. "The process is successful if the person receiving the information gives feedback which shows understanding for meaning." [1]

Suspending one's own frame of reference, suspending judgment and avoiding other internal mental activities are important to fully attend to the speaker.

Primary elements

There are three primary elements that comprise active listening: comprehending, retaining, and responding.

Comprehending

Comprehension is "shared meaning between parties in a communication transaction". 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. This becomes significantly more difficult with an unfamiliar language because the speech sounds blend together into a continuous jumble. Determining the context and meanings of each word is essential to comprehending a sentence.

Retaining

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. 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. 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). 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.

Responding

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 chooses to either adjust or continue with his/her communication style.

Tactics

Active listening involves the listener observing 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. 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 will 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 one listens to someone else’s argument for its weaknesses and ignore its strengths. The purpose is to attack the speaker’s position and support their 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," 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 ..."

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." 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." 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.

Use

Active listening is used in a wide variety of situations, including public interest advocacy, community organizing, tutoring, medical workers talking to patients, HIV counseling, helping suicidal persons, management, 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.

Active listening chart

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 proper use of active listening results in getting people to open up, avoiding misunderstandings, resolving conflict, and building trust. In a medical context, benefits may include increased patient satisfaction, improved cross-cultural communication, improved outcomes, or decreased litigation.

Active listening can be lifted by the active listening observation scale.

Barriers to active listening

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.

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.

Shift response

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. 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. It is the response most likely to be used by a competent communicator

Competitive interrupting

Interrupting is what happens when one person stops speaking because another person starts speaking. Competitive interrupting is "when we dominate the conversation by seizing the floor from others who are speaking". 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/pseudolistening

Glazing over occurs when the listener’s attention wanders from the speaker’s message and they begin to daydream. The listener does not even pretend to listen to the speaker’s message. In general the brain processes words faster than people can speak, so a competent communicator will use the difference between the rate of speaking and processing to think about the conveyed message. 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.

Stage hogging

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.

Overcoming listening barriers

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. Judging or arguing prematurely is a result of holding onto a strict personal opinion. This hinders the ability to be able to listen closely to what is being said. 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 seen as important components to active listening. Effective listening involves focusing on what the speaker is saying; at times the listener might come across certain key words which may help them understand the speaker. The stress and intonation may also keep them active and away from distractions. Taking notes on the message can aid in retention.

Misconceptions about listening

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. 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.

Active listening in music

Active Listening has been developed as a concept in music and technology by François Pachet, researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory - Paris. Active listening in music refers to the idea that listeners can be given some degree of control on the music they listen to, by means of technological applications mainly based on artificial intelligence and information theory techniques, by opposition to traditional listening, in which the musical media is played passively by some neutral device

See also

• Informational listening
• Reflective listening
• Workplace listening
• Appreciative listening
• Four-sides model

External links

• Listening is powerful medicine, National Public Radio, February 2009
• Active Listening International Online Training Program On Intractable Conflict: Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, USA
• Empathic listening skills How to listen so others feel heard, or listening first aid (University of California). Download a one hour seminar on empathic listening and attending skills.
• Exercise 4 – Active Listening, Center for Rural Studies, University of Vermont, Montpelier
• Active listening: A communication tool
• Homepage of the International Listening Association The professional organization whose members are dedicated to learning more about the impact that listening has on all human activity