How To Develop Your Effective Listening Skills

Few things in life are quite as meaningful as being seen, heard, and known. Life is busy, which means that we’re often too distracted and preoccupied to pay attention to what’s around us. That is why when someone takes the time to hear us out and they practice effective listening, it stands out.

Being an effective listener is a gift that you can give to your loved ones, colleagues, or even total strangers. Listening well has wide-ranging benefits for you and all of your relationships, so it is a skill well worth adding to your toolbelt. Mission Viejo Christian Counseling helps you develop this skill to strengthen all your relationships.

What is effective listening?

Would you consider yourself a good listener? Most of us would likely answer in the affirmative, but the reality is that our collective listening skills are in poor shape. Effective listening is something of an art, one that requires patience to learn and practice. It’s a way of engaging with others in which you, the listener, are fully present and open to the other person.

When you are an effective listener, you ask questions to gain understanding instead of making assumptions about what the other person might mean. As you listen, you do so to digest what is being said and not simply wait to reply. Have you ever been talking with someone, and you could see that they stopped listening to you and were just itching to say something? It strongly suggests that they’re not hearing you.

Additionally, effective listening is a tool to discern the underlying meaning of a person’s words. After all, when people communicate, it’s more than just words that convey meaning. A person’s tone of voice, posture, and other emotional cues alert you to what may be going on beneath the surface. When one is an effective listener, they pay attention to their own body language and tone of voice that convey interest, boredom, etc., so that they can be open and inviting.

In sum, effective listening is about the various practices that add up to hearing what is being said and doing so in such a way that the other person leaves the conversation feeling seen and heard. Even with difficult conversations with escalated tensions, an effective listener can listen with openness and empathy, without being judgmental or rude by interrupting the other person. Even when the stakes are high such as in a conflict situation, the effective listener can give the other person a fair hearing before arriving at any conclusions.

Effective listening is difficult because most of our natural impulses point away from the very practices that allow us to hear well. We want to defend ourselves, not be misunderstood, and make sure that our voices are heard. Unfortunately, that means we often listen without understanding, are impatient, and easily convey our irritation, judgment, or boredom – all things that shut down open dialogue.

Why effective listening matters

Effective listening matters because our relationships are built on daily interactions in which meaning can be confused, with possibly disastrous effects. In a conflict situation, effective listening can help you understand the issues at stake and the perspective of the other person. This allows you to propose potential solutions that address the real issues, making for more effective problem-solving and conflict resolution.

Effective listening also gives you the advantage of being able to communicate well with others. Whether you’re an employee, a manager, or a business owner, the necessary parties must clearly understand the goals, strategies, and processes to promote effectiveness.

Listening well helps you discern where there may be confusion or a lack of clarity about tasks and expectations. You’ll make fewer mistakes because you understand the assignment. Not only does effective listening help you communicate better in this regard, but it can make a difference in productivity, team cohesion, and harmony.

To grow, a person needs a posture of humility and a willingness to learn. Being an effective listener enables you to gain information from every conversation because you approach them with openness and without judgment. By being interested and willing to ask questions of others, an effective listener allows others to communicate their expertise and learns from them. By not focusing on a specific outcome, you’re present in the here and now, and that focus will allow you to learn.

One of the results of effective listening is that you forge good relationships with people. When people feel valued, heard, respected, and understood, it’s more likely that they’ll reciprocate and be willing to listen to you. People that are great listeners tend to be viewed as supportive, trustworthy, and reliable – all positive traits that promote meaningful connections with others.

Obstacles to effective listening

There are many obstacles to being an effective listener. For one thing, assuming that we are already effective listeners can prevent us from learning to be better listeners. If you want to be a more effective listener, assume that you’ve still got a lot to learn and habits to unlearn. Other obstacles to effective listening include the following:

Distractions

It’s hard to free oneself from distractions. Between our phones, laptops, smartwatches, and busy schedules, we’re constantly buzzing, beeping, and plugged in to a thousand other things clamoring for our attention. The person that’s talking to you will likely see that you’re distracted, and you’ll probably miss what they’re saying because you’re not giving them your full attention.

Impatience and anger

Who has time to slow down and smell the coffee? Good listening takes time, and often we just struggle to slow down enough to be present and attentive. Anger can also prevent us from hearing others.

We want to fix things

Another reason we may be poor listeners is that we are eager to help. That’s not a bad thing, but it can lead us to jump to conclusions and respond without listening first. We can also end up interrupting the other person to offer advice, disrupting their flow of thought.

Arrogance

The word “arrogance” may sound harsh, but it can be an appropriate explanation for why we make assumptions instead of asking for clarifications, and it can account for why we listen with our minds already made up instead of remaining open to what the other person has to say. Being sure of what you think you know is not necessarily wrong, but it can be a recipe for ignoring what the other person is saying. It stands in the way of learning.

The keys to effective listening

How can you grow to be an effective listener? One of the most important things to set in place to be an effective listener is to put yourself and your interests second in the interaction. One challenging Bible passage reads, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2: 3-4, ESV).

Everything in our society tells us to place ourselves first and look out for ourselves because no one else will. Our lives become a kind of contest for supremacy, and that goes for our time and our listening as well.

However, Paul in that letter to the Philippians tells us that Jesus sets a different kind of precedent, one that is marked by humility. Humility is something of a byword in our culture, as one author writes, saying:

Our modern-day definitions of humility tend to equate the word with low self-esteem, a soft and pliable disposition, lack of ambition, and a conscious effort to minimize or downplay all of our accomplishments. No wonder most of us treat humility as a lofty ideal, something to strive for on occasion, though not something we want too much of… At its core, biblical humility is simply serving others by putting their needs and interests above our own. It’s treating others the same way we’d treat them if they were someone ‘important.’ It doesn’t mean we become a doormat. It does mean we become a servant – Larry Osborne

Jesus showed us what it means to be a servant, humbling Himself and setting aside His glory to become human and save us. Humility is a key component to effective listening, as you set aside your own agenda, and don’t engage in half-hearted listening. For us, humility might allow us to keep an open mind because we recognize that we don’t know everything.

Being a servant to someone else in the moment of listening to them may include reminding yourself that you need to hear what’s being said to you to understand the other person, and you should not assume that you know their meaning without hearing them out first. We honor them by dignifying them with an uninterrupted hearing.

Growing as an effective listener also requires the following:

• Curiosity
• Being able to ask good questions.
• Having the patience and willingness to learn from others.

Growing as an effective listener is a lifelong process of learning. Sometimes, the issues that prevent us from being effective listeners are rooted in long-standing habits that have been ingrained in us. You can get help from a Christian counselor at Mission Viejo Christian Counseling to overcome issues such as anger, poor conflict resolution skills, conflict avoidance, etc. Your counselor can assist you by helping to cultivate your listening skills through practical exercises that will instill healthy patterns of thought and behavior.