Before you speak, listen

Thomas Gordon regarded “Active listening” as the ability to fully concentrate on the speaker in order to thoroughly understand their message and react thoughtfully. Active listening is not only a powerful communication tool, but also the one and only way to truly get to know another person on a deep emotional level.

However, we cannot employ it as a technique if our fundamental attitudes are in conflict with its basic concepts, or our behavior will be empty and sterile. Until we can demonstrate a spirit which genuinely respects the potential worth of the individual, which considers his sights and trusts his capacity for self-direction, we cannot begin to be effective listeners.

That being said, active listening is an important way to bring about changes in people and their attitude. It makes them less argumentative and defensive and more ready to incorporate other points of view and experiences. Because listening reduces the threat of having one’s ideas criticized, the person is better able to see them for what they are and is more likely to feel that his contributions are worthwhile. At the same time, it allows the listener to gather precious contextual information and create the opportunity for growth within the relationship.

Active listening relies upon definite techniques—things to do and things to avoid doing. These techniques aim at creating a climate which is neither critical, evaluative, nor moralizing but is one of equality and freedom, safety and understanding, acceptance and trust.

This is what allows individual feels safe enough to incorporate new experiences and new values into his concept of himself.

Active listening allows the listener to dig deeper into another’s emotional world and understand his/her perspective. This can only be achieved by removing any form of judgement in first place – passing judgement makes free expression difficult and may block further communication - and avoiding any attempt to change the speaker’s way of looking at things. Needless to say, preach, scold, insult, prod are major deal-breakers.

Similarly, advice and solutions - unless you have been asked for - are almost always seen as efforts to change a person and pose a barrier to his self-expression and the development of a creative relationship. Even positive evaluations are sometimes as blocking as negative ones. Something as simple as: “I’m sure everything will work out O.K.” is not a helpful response to the person who is deeply discouraged about a problem.

There is always two components to the message a person is conveying: the content or the facts and the feeling or attitude underlying this content. It is this total meaning of the message that we try to understand, and to catch the full flavor or meaning of the message, one must respond particularly to the feeling component. Active listening entails going deeper into the mind of the speaker to understand his perspective and what it means to him.

Truly sensitive listening requires that we pay attention to all verbal and non verbal cues such as tone of voice, facial expressions, body posture, hand movements, eye movements, and breathing.

Because understanding another person is actually far more difficult than it at first seems, it is important to test constantly your ability to see the world in the way the speaker sees it. You can do this by reflecting in your own words what the speaker has expressed with his words and actions. A good rule of thumb is to assume that you never really understand until you can communicate this understanding to the other person’s satisfaction. Therefore, before making your point, you should restate his/her point and do this in your own words (merely parroting the words of another does not prove that one has understood but only that he has heard the words).

His response to your paraphrasing will tell you whether or not the speaker feels understood. If he /she does, then you can go ahead and explain your perspective.

Whereas it is most difficult to convince someone that you respect him just by telling him so, active listening is a powerful demonstration of respect and appreciation.

By actively listening we are telling the speaker: “I’m interested in you as a person and you’re worth listening to. What you feel is important to me. I respect your thoughts, and even if I don’t agree with them, I know that your perspective is valid. I’m not trying to change, judge you or evaluate you. I just want to understand you”.

Like other behaviors, listening behavior is contagious. Just as anger is usually met with anger, argument with argument, and deception with deception, the listening behavior exhibited by one person will eventually be responded to with similar behavior in the other person.

Whether between two people or within a large organization, every person who feels responsibility in a situation can set the tone of the interaction. Setting a pattern of listening will ensure good communication.

Like any other skill, active listening demands practice and may even require some changes in your own basic attitudes.

First and foremost, to be effective at all in active listening, one must have a sincere interest in the speaker. The speaker will easily be able to pick up, either consciously or unconsciously, on any pretense of interest, and once he does, he will no longer express himself freely.

We are so accustomed to think in terms of who's right and who's wrong right that active listening requires a great deal of inner security and courage to be able to give up, even momentarily, what we believe in order to understand another and embrace our differences as an opportunity for learning.