How To Use and Improve Active Listening Skills This Year

Active listening skills can help you succeed in jobs and life. What do you need to know about using and cultivating active listening skills?

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Table of Contents

  1. Active Listening Skills
  2. What Is Active Listening?
  3. When Active Listening Is Useful in Your Job
  4. How To Use Active Listening Skills?
  5. FAQ: Active Listening Skills

Active Listening Skills

There are many different skills you’ll likely want to develop if you want to get better at your job, whether it’s for today or the future. One of the biggest transferable skills is your ability to listen to other people more effectively. Active listening techniques can help you create more effective communication not only in your professional life but also in your personal life. If you’re interested in the benefits of active listening and how it can help with interpersonal communication, here are some tips that can help.

What Is Active Listening?

Active listening means you’re listening to someone and actually considering what they’re saying. To be an attentive listener, you need to listen to the speaker’s words and approach them with an open mind. You also need to give the speaker your full attention. In doing so, you need to take some extra steps to ensure you really understand what they’re saying before you respond.

Active listening is one of the most important communication skills and a great key to improving your interpersonal skills. Active listening allows the speaker to feel like they’re being heard, allows you to understand the points they’re making, and is especially conducive to conflict resolution and problem-solving. It’s an incredibly important skill that just about everyone needs to have.

When Active Listening Is Useful in Your Job

Active listening is useful in just about every work context where you’re talking to another person. Effective listening makes it much easier for you to talk to other people who work at your workplace, no matter where you’re doing it. You may be able to see the benefits of active listening in any of these situations:

  • During teamwork events
  • When supervising another person
  • When someone else gives you constructive criticism
  • When speaking with a customer or client
  • When communicating professionally in general

Essentially, whenever you have a conversation partner, it can be beneficial to use active listening to ensure you’re building trust in the conversation and facilitating good communication. It’s one of the most important soft skills out there, and you’re probably going to use it on a regular basis.

How To Use Active Listening Skills?

There are many ways to use active listening skills. If you want to show your conversation partner that you really care about what they’re saying, you can do these things:

  • Make eye contact during the conversation.
  • Use nonverbal cues and body language to show that you’re interested.
  • Try paraphrasing the person’s words to summarize what you think they’re saying.
  • Restate what the other person has said in your own words, to ensure you’ve understood
  • Ask open-ended questions about anything you don’t understand.
  • Remain non-judgmental and keep an open mind.
  • Relate the experience to similar experiences you’ve had..
  • Share your views once you’ve expressed that you’re listening..

If you use these tips, you’ll be a better listener. A good listener will often showcase many or even all of these in every conversation.

It’s also important to remember that at the end of the day, the intention behind active listening is to make the other person feel like you really care about what they’re saying to you. You want them to know you understand their point of view and you aren’t just hearing them out to make them feel better. Anything you can do to advance that intention can help you communicate more effectively.

FAQ: Active Listening Skills

Q: How can I express active listening skills on a CV?

Active listening is a skill many recruiters are looking for. If you’re trying to showcase active listening skills on your CV, one of the best options is to talk about stories that showcase your active listening skills. In bullet points describing past work experience. You may want to include a bullet point saying something like, “Used active listening skills to resolve conflicts among coworkers.” Remember to only showcase active listening on a CV if it’s one of your best skills.

Q: What can I do to get better at active listening?

The best way to get better at active listening is simply to practice it in your daily life. The more often you practice a skill, the better you’ll be at it, and that includes soft skills as well as hard skills. The more frequently you practice your active listening skills, the better you’ll become at picking up on your conversation partner’s key points and caring about the person speaking to you. You can also use online courses and articles to start understanding the finer points of active listening.

Q: Do managers need active listening more than general workers?

Everyone needs active listening skills. However, it’s true that some people need those skills more than others. When you’re directing individuals as a manager, you need the skill to be able to see another point of view and listen to issues that arise on a daily basis. If you’re going to be in a managerial position, you need to invest in and practice active listening skills.

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