10 tips on how to be a better listener

Here's a statistic to make you chuckle: 96 per cent of people consider themselves good listeners. 

I don't know about you, but lived experience certainly tells me otherwise.

Besides, another online statistic I found showed that more than half of employees don't feel listened to by their managers. 

Does that make a majority of us bad conversationalists? 

I wouldn't dare to argue with the internet, so probably yes. 

And that's a big shame because there's something beautiful and profound about giving someone your full attention. 

Likewise, there's nothing more validating than being listened to by someone with no other intention than to understand you better.

And yet, we neither offer nor receive the gift of listening often enough.  

Having worked as a coach and professional listener for the past ten years, here are ten tips to practise your listening skills.

These tips are particularly useful when managing or coaching someone, but I'd encourage you to apply them in your personal life too.

Tip #1: Decide when deep listening is required 

Most social interactions don't require us to put the other person at the centre, and it's not necessarily a problem if some of our conversations feel a little imbalanced.

However, if a situation does call on you to be a more active listener, you need to make a conscious decision to do so early on in the conversation.

Getting clear on what's expected from you will calm down your ego and stop you from inappropriately trying to compete for airspace.

Tip #2: Vent or forward? 

Having decided to be an active listener, you must then establish what's expected of you in this conversation.

Are you acting as a sounding board, a shoulder to cry on or an advisor, and does the speaker want an emotional conversation or a practical one? 

That's a decision for them to make, not you as the listener, but you need to ask them what they expect from you in that conversation.

As the speaker, there's nothing more frustrating than being offered unsolicited advice when you simply want sympathy or vice versa.   

Tip #3:  Tune your orchestra

I take at least fifteen minutes before each coaching session to ground myself, regulate my breathing, read through my notes, and set a clear intention to make this client the focus of my universe for the next sixty minutes. 

Like an orchestra tuning its instruments before a performance, taking some time to prepare and get yourself in the right state of mind will help you free up the bandwidth necessary to give the speaker your undivided attention.  

Tip #4: Make the other person more interesting than you

Some helpful wisdom from the Dalai Lama: "When you talk, you're simply repeating what you already know.

But when you listen, you may actually learn something new". 

People are fascinating – even Sarah from Accounts with her endless love dramas.

You'll be surprised at how the quality of your conversations increases once you approach them with curiosity and a desire to learn rather than your need to persuade or be heard. 

Tip #5: Use a mindmap

As an active listener, your job is to help people see the wood for the trees when they're speaking.

Sometimes, that wood feels more like an Amazon rainforest with endless loops, tangents, repetitions and dead-ends. 

During coaching sessions, I make mental mindmaps and populate them with imaginary post-its of crucial points – like those animated doodle videos you see on YouTube.

I also try to visualise their stories as if they're a movie, which makes it easier for me to refer back to earlier points they made. 

Tip #6: WAIT - Why Am I Talking? 

There's a big difference between listening and simply waiting for your turn to speak.

As an active listener, you have to remind yourself often that you're working to the speaker's agenda rather than yours.

If you're in your own head preparing what to say next, it's impossible to give the other person your full attention. 

When listening deeply, ask yourself before you interject: "Why Am I Talking? (or 'WAIT'. Get it?)

Unless you're confident that your intervention will help move the conversation forward, it's better to stay quiet. 

Tip #7: Be a trampoline, not a sponge 

Listening is hard because it often feels so passive.

Indeed, there's nothing pleasant about needing to act like a sponge for someone else's thoughts with no space to interact. But there's a reason it's called active listening.

To paraphrase leadership authors, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, active listening should turn you into a trampoline, giving the speaker's thoughts height, acceleration, energy and amplification.

Nothing passive about that.   

Tip #8: Be careful with open questions

We're often taught that to demonstrate active listening, we need to ask lots of open questions.

In fairness, open questions are generally better than closed ones, but nothing demonstrates bad listening more than asking lots of random open questions. 

You know, the ones where the listener knows they're expected to show an interest in what's being said, but they've got their head somewhere else. 

Unless you're confident your question will expand the conversation and help the speaker generate new insights or learnings, don't ask. 

Tip #9: Paraphrase rather parrot

Most listening courses will tell you that to show deep listening, you need to repeat what the speaker said using their exact words.

Not only is this awkward for the speaker, but it also adds very little to the conversation.  

Rather than parroting back someone's words, you're better off paraphrasing them – demonstrating that you heard what they said and made a deliberate effort to process their words.

Besides, listening to your interpretation can be pretty meta for the speaker and lead to interesting new insights. 

Tip #10: Listen out for what's not being said 

Words only tell thirty per cent of the story, so look for clues about the meaning of those words and the speaker's emotional state by focusing on their breathing, tonality and body posture. 

Also, trust what your own body and intuition tell you when something feels off about what you're hearing, and do your best to help the speaker uncover some of their blind spots by pointing out what is not being said.