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Active listening

How can active listening improve people, teams, or organisational effectiveness?

AccessibleOperationalOrganisation2 min read

Contents

As children we are taught not to interrupt when others are talking and are asked to be quiet and listen.

Being quiet while another person speaks is not necessarily listening. Speech averages about 150 words per minute, or 2.5 words per second, while a listener can often understand familiar language accelerated toward 600 words per minute when pitch is preserved. That spare mental capacity makes it easy to drift away, rehearse a reply or interrupt. Active listening uses the capacity to examine meaning instead.

When to use it

Use active listening whenever you need information and the social or work setting allows questions.
Apply it when learning, gathering evidence, deepening understanding or simply giving attention to someone with something worthwhile to share.

Origins

Psychologist Carl Rogers established the foundations through person-centred counselling, emphasizing empathy, genuineness and respect for another person's capacity for self-direction. Rogers and Richard Farson described the term and practice in their nineteen fifty-seven paper Active Listening, published by the University of Chicago's Industrial Relations Center. Their listener sought to understand both content and feeling and checked that interpretation instead of merely waiting to reply.

What it is

People sometimes suppress a genuine question because they fear looking foolish, assume they should know the answer or believe everyone else already understands. Earlier experiences—such as being told at school that a question is stupid because the explanation has already been given—can reinforce the habit.

Active listening replaces passive silence with disciplined understanding. The listener summarizes, paraphrases, asks and checks, reducing ambiguity, partial understanding and preventable misunderstanding.

How to use it

Look interested and cultivate genuine curiosity about what the other person can teach you.

Manage visible bias. Dislike leaks through posture, expression and tone, while people share more freely when they feel trusted. If warmth is not genuine, aim at least for respectful neutrality.

Ask probing questions. Avoid “So what you are trying to say is ...”, which can sound patronizing. Try: “May I check my understanding?” Then explain what you heard in your own words and invite correction. Useful prompts include:

What happened next?
How did you handle that situation?
Who else was involved and what role did each person play?
What was the final result?

Acknowledge what is interesting and invite related experience when it will deepen the subject rather than divert it.

Respond to what the person actually said instead of opening an unrelated branch because it is more comfortable or familiar to you.

Use attentive nonverbal behaviour: face the speaker, lean in slightly where appropriate, nod naturally and use brief acknowledgements without performing interest theatrically.

Suspend judgement long enough to understand. Listen with attention and speak intentionally, when a question, reflection or contribution is genuinely useful.

As a practical discipline, aim to listen for 80 per cent of the conversation and speak for 20 per cent, particularly in progress meetings and appraisals. The ratio is a prompt, not a rigid quota; the essential behaviour is sustained curiosity.

Final analysis.

Active listening helps the speaker feel respected, increases trust and gives the listener access to better information. It requires concentration rather than passivity and, with practice, strengthens attention itself.

Top practical tip

Ask one probing question and then paraphrase the answer before introducing your own view. The speaker's correction will show whether you understood the point or merely recognized familiar words.

Top pitfall

Do not imitate listening signals while planning your reply. Nods and eye contact cannot compensate for a response that ignores what was said.