Steps of Active Listening

In active listening, you pay attention to not just the content of what people are saying, but also to the emotions that lie behind what they say.  When you actively listen, you hold back your need to persuade. Your goal is to help the other person express what he or she feels and to show that you want to understand what he or she is thinking.

Active listening involves the following behaviors:

1. Pay attention with your whole body… sit back and focus on the other person.  Extend your full attention.
2. Make eye contact… listen with your eyes. Focus on what the person says. Observe  his or her expressions. Try to determine what the face and body say, along with the message.
3. Show interest… occasionally repeat what you heard the other person say to verify the message.
4. Ask open-ended questions…. draw the person out. Often it takes time to express a point or reveal honest feelings..  Open ended questions require more than a "yes" or "no"… often they are "how" or "why" questions.
5. Listen to the feelings behind the message… in addition to what the person is verbalizing, each statement also says something about the person’s feelings and attitudes. Try to hear not just the content, but the feelings behind it, too.
6. Confirm and clarify what you’ve heard… make sure you receive the meaning of the message accurately by repeating it back to the person.  Try to summarize and get to the core of the person’s message.
7. Look for signals… body language, facial expression, nervous movement, touching of the face or body, tone of voice, rate of speech, volume—these will all tell you what is trying to be said but you need to truly home in and focus on the message being delivered.  This requires skill, time and effort, but will pay off in big dividends once you understand what a person is truly trying to say.

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