Improving your listening skills: why and how?
19 June 2012
Read by 2260 persons
We've been taught since childhood that communicating is about talking, about learning to express ourselves well... Wrong. Or at least, incomplete. Communicating means following and practicing the multiple paths of listening and responding. This therefore also means knowing how to listen and, above all, knowing how to hear...
How do you listen?
Perhaps we should ask ourselves what our specific form of listening is, whether we interrupt people when they speak to us, whether we sometimes simulate the calm attitude of someone who already knows when we don't, whether we try to speak more than our interlocutor, whether we are in a hurry for them to stop speaking so that we can, finally, speak in their place, etc... Answering yes to all these questions probably means having to relearn how to listen a little...
1) Be quiet.
The best way to encourage, to motivate the other person to express themselves, is to start by being quiet, by giving them a real margin of freedom of expression: silence. Often, we speak to fill these silences, to avoid them. This is a mistake. Silence is the space we offer to the other person so that they can exist with their voice and their ideas.
2) Respect your interlocutor's words.
Respecting the other person's words means being attentive to their rhythm, their accelerations, their pauses, their moments of hesitation, their moments of restructuring thought, their micro-emotional movements... It's about accompanying them on this journey, embracing the contours of their thought with them. This does not mean sharing it, but understanding it in depth, at least grasping it in its entirety.
3) Stop being impatient.
Speaking when you feel the other person is impatient to see you be quiet is unbearable but extremely effective: you fall silent very quickly. So learn to relax, not to rush mentally to your ideas, but to have the patience to really listen to the other person's.
4) Try to go further in their reflection.
Take the time to concentrate on what you are being told, on the information you are being given, offered, and be quick. Try to find out more, question your discussion partner.
5) Be open.
Be curious, keep your mind open so that you can receive the information that is offered to you. The Other is a gold mine of information, stories, extraordinary anecdotes, experiences, lived experiences... Listen to people's stories, they are true. If you are passionate about their stories, they will become fascinating. Each piece of experience can be reused in your professional world but also in your personal sphere.
6) Stay active.
Listening, questioning, moving the discussion forward, is based on two simple principles:
- point your (mental) finger at the last word of the sentence that has been given to you.
and/or
- point to the information that pleases you, attracts you, or even fascinates you.
7) Avoid answering immediately.
Be careful not to answer immediately, on direct impulse, without thinking, just to speak. This kind of immediate response is tiring and, very often, exhausts the conversation quite quickly. Take the time to practice rhythm changes, sometimes just nod your head, make discreet and encouraging murmurs.
Article written by The ReKrute.com team
Posted online on June 19, 2012.
How do you listen?
Perhaps we should ask ourselves what our specific form of listening is, whether we interrupt people when they speak to us, whether we sometimes simulate the calm attitude of someone who already knows when we don't, whether we try to speak more than our interlocutor, whether we are in a hurry for them to stop speaking so that we can, finally, speak in their place, etc... Answering yes to all these questions probably means having to relearn how to listen a little...
1) Be quiet.
The best way to encourage, to motivate the other person to express themselves, is to start by being quiet, by giving them a real margin of freedom of expression: silence. Often, we speak to fill these silences, to avoid them. This is a mistake. Silence is the space we offer to the other person so that they can exist with their voice and their ideas.
2) Respect your interlocutor's words.
Respecting the other person's words means being attentive to their rhythm, their accelerations, their pauses, their moments of hesitation, their moments of restructuring thought, their micro-emotional movements... It's about accompanying them on this journey, embracing the contours of their thought with them. This does not mean sharing it, but understanding it in depth, at least grasping it in its entirety.
3) Stop being impatient.
Speaking when you feel the other person is impatient to see you be quiet is unbearable but extremely effective: you fall silent very quickly. So learn to relax, not to rush mentally to your ideas, but to have the patience to really listen to the other person's.
4) Try to go further in their reflection.
Take the time to concentrate on what you are being told, on the information you are being given, offered, and be quick. Try to find out more, question your discussion partner.
5) Be open.
Be curious, keep your mind open so that you can receive the information that is offered to you. The Other is a gold mine of information, stories, extraordinary anecdotes, experiences, lived experiences... Listen to people's stories, they are true. If you are passionate about their stories, they will become fascinating. Each piece of experience can be reused in your professional world but also in your personal sphere.
6) Stay active.
Listening, questioning, moving the discussion forward, is based on two simple principles:
- point your (mental) finger at the last word of the sentence that has been given to you.
and/or
- point to the information that pleases you, attracts you, or even fascinates you.
7) Avoid answering immediately.
Be careful not to answer immediately, on direct impulse, without thinking, just to speak. This kind of immediate response is tiring and, very often, exhausts the conversation quite quickly. Take the time to practice rhythm changes, sometimes just nod your head, make discreet and encouraging murmurs.
Article written by The ReKrute.com team
Posted online on June 19, 2012.
