Skills Lab: Active Listening vs Skilled Listening
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When it comes to communication, there’s a big difference between listening to someone, and making someone feel listened to. To this point, I actually prefer the term skilled listening to active listening because it does feel more like a skill that you can develop as opposed to something that just requires participation to be successful at.
Active listening, or skilled listening, isn’t just nodding your head and making eye contact. Yes, it involves those. And, being a great listener involves the intention of making the other person feel listened to which requires more presence and awareness on your part as well as how to respond to the other person.
Great leaders and coworkers understand that listening isn’t just about information being passed from one person to the next - it’s about the impact you’re making in real time on that person.
When you interact with the intent of making someone feel listened to, you’re naturally more aware of your body language; putting down your phone, closing your laptop, stopping what you’re doing to tune in, and giving eye contact.
Skilled listening also involves responding in a way that conveys that you heard and understood the message. Depending on the context of the situation, conveying that might look like a variety of different things.
Here are five ways you can put this into action and make sure you are practicing skilled listening:
Repeating back and summarizing what was said for clarity.
Asking follow up questions, if you have any.
Asking if they’re done sharing before you respond.
Giving a thumbs up with eye contact and saying “Got it.“
Depending on the situation it involves you asking them if they feel like you heard and understand them, and are both on the same page.
Regardless of the context, the objective is to show up in the conversation and respond in a way that causes the other person to feel heard. Just this simple goal will level up your presence and communication skills with every interaction in your life.
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