How To Improve Listening Skills In Conversations

Did you know that around 85% of the problems which you experience in life involve other people? And that the inability to get along with others is the most common reason why people lose their job? Your ability to get along with other people is therefore the single largest determinate of the success that you will experience in life. So if you want to make something of yourself, developing good people skills should be one of your top priorities.

Although there are many different ways to become a people person, one of the most important is to simply listen to what another person is saying.  Since so few people do this properly, if you can improve your listening skills you will automatically give yourself a major advantage when interacting with others.

In the first part of this article, we shall provide you with some basic tips on how to become a better listener when speaking with another person. Most of this you should already know, but it can still serve as a useful refresher to go over it again.

In the second part of this article, we will cover some more advanced listening skills known as reflective listening. These skills are commonly taught to therapists and psychologists in order to help them interact more effectively with a patient.

Improving Your Conversational Listening Skills

Whilst reading this article will point you in the right direction to becoming a better listener, in order to really improve your listening skills, you must actively go out and have conversations with people so that you can practice what you have just learnt. The more you talk with others, the more opportunities you will have to practice and the better a listener you will become.

How do you know when you have turned into a good listener? Simple. People will enjoy having a conversation with you and will talk to you more often as a result! So let’s get started by covering some basic listening skills.

Look Them In The Face

When you look at another person in the face, your body language communicates to them that you are interested in what they are saying and that they have your full attention.

If however, you start looking to the side, looking around the room or looking down at the floor, you send a very different message. By avoiding eye contact, you signal to the speaker disinterest, lack of confidence and the suggestion that you may have something to hide.

When looking into the speaker’s eyes, don’t just stare at them blankly as this can also signal disinterest. Rather, try to animate your face as they are speaking by smiling, nodding or shaking your head when appropriate. This will make you a more interesting person to talk to and also a more enjoyable one, as the speaker’s self-confidence and self-esteem will be boosted by your interest in what they are saying.

If you have trouble looking someone in the eyes, focus your gaze in the space between the eyes in the region that lies just above the bridge of the nose. This will make it appear as if you are looking directly into their eyes, and will result in you feeling less self-conscious if you find it difficult to maintain eye contact.

Listen Without Interrupting!

I know someone who interrupts virtually every sentence I speak and it’s very frustrating to say the least! If you have trouble interrupting people, practice the three-second rule. When the speaker has finished a sentence, or when you think they have finished, mentally count to three. If they haven’t said anything else, then go ahead and start talking.

The three-second rule will help you to avoid the most common cause of interruptions, speaking when another person pauses in mid sentence. In order to develop good communication skills, you need to listen out for and identify the pauses when you shouldn’t speak and those which signal when you should speak.

If you constantly interrupt another person, they will soon find it very frustrating and quickly dislike having conversations with you. Interrupting another person is also another sign of disinterest, as by not giving another person a chance to have their say, you are essentially telling them that you don’t really care about what they are saying because what you have to say is more important.

Pause Before Replying

Just like how you can use pauses to avoid inappropriate interruptions, so can you use pauses to produce more thoughtful and relevent responses. When you pause after the other person has finished speaking, you signal to them that you are deeply considering what they have said. In other words, you are showing them that what they have just said is important to you.

Secondly, by pausing before replying, you also give yourself a few moments for their words to sink in. This allows you to think about what you are going to say, rather than just quickly spouting off the first thing that comes into mind. As a result, you are more likely to say something which is relevant, considerate and interesting rather than something which is inappropriate, offensive or boring.

As an added bonus, using pauses can help to slow down a conversation so that you are both able to catch your breath. This in turn will make you both feel at ease talking with each other, as you won’t have to worry about struggling to have your say.

Match The Tempo

Some people talk really fast, whilst others prefer to talk slowly. Fast talkers and slow talkers do not mix!

Fast talkers can find it frustrating talking to slow talkers, because they quickly become impatient waiting for the other person to finish. When this occurs, they will usually try to finish the other person’s sentence for them so that they can  speed up the conversation.

Slow talkers can find it difficult talking to fast talkers because they struggle to keep up with what has been said. This may result in them missing key points and then asking the speaker to repeat themselves which only leads to further frustration for both parties.

By matching the tempo of the person you are speaking with however, you can help to avoid these kinds of uncomfortable conversations. For fast talkers, talk quickly with them. For slow talkers, talk slowly with them. The closer you can match a speaker’s tempo, the more effectively you will be able to communicate with them.

Repeat It Back

By repeating what the other person has just said, but in your own words, you will give the impression that you clearly understand them. This will give the speaker confidence in you, especially if they have asked you to do something. This is known as reflective listening, and is something that we shall explore in greater depth later on in this article on improving your listening skills.

Question For Clarification

In a conversation, the person who asks the questions has control. You should therefore make sure that the type of questions you ask are appropriate for the responses you want.

For example, if you are trying to find out more information about something, you should ask questions that will require more than a one word to answer. These are known as open-ended questions and usually begin with “what“, “where“, “why“, “how” and “when“.

If you are trying to get a definite answer, such as getting a person to commit to something, then you should ask closed-ended questions that can only be answered with one word, such as “yes” or “no“. Does that make sense? (closed question).

Be careful though not to bombard a person with questions, as otherwise your conversation will seem more like an interview or an interrogation.

To avoid this from happening, ask a person two or three questions and then give your opinion as part of your response to their question. This will make them feel that you are interested in learning what they think, and make you a more interesting conversationalist by sharing your own thoughts and opinions.

Don’t Argue

Arguments begin when two people have different points of view, and it is one of the quickest ways to make someone dislike you. If you know what the other person has said is wrong, avoid the temptation to argue and prove that you are right.

Even if the other person admits that you are right, they will secretly resent you for it. So unless it is really important, it’s better just to let it go rather than risk creating conflict.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t disagree with someone, as disagreements can help to make conversations more interesting and exciting. But if you are constantly trying to prove how much you know and how little the other person knows, you will quickly find yourself alienated by other people because nobody likes a smart ass.

Another reason to avoid getting into arguments, is because when people argue they tend not to listen to each other. As a result, even though a lot can be said, arguments very rarely lead to constructive conversations.

Listen To The Content

Everyone who you meet will have certain things which they are interested in. Some people like sports, some like entertainment and some like educational topics.

As you are speaking to a person, listen carefully and ask questions to gain clues as to where their interests lie. If you talk with someone about something which they have little or no interest in, they will find both you and the conversation very boring.

You will known when you hit upon a subject of interest as there will be an immediate and noticeable change in them. They may start to talk faster, become more emotional and will overall seem more involved and engrossed in the conversation which you are having.

How To Use Reflective Listening

Reflective listening, also called active listening or empathetic listening, is a communication skill that involves listening to the words which a person has said in addition to the things which they have not said. This allows you to grasp the full content of a message without becoming distracted by emotionally laden words. This in turn, will result in more effective and appropriate communication.

For example, if a person shouts at you and tells you they hate you but their body language suggests otherwise, you can take what they have said with a pinch of salt because you know how they really feel.

Reflective listening is therefore a very important communication skill to develop, because once you improve your ability to hear what a person is really saying, you will then be much better able to express yourself in a way that the other person will understand and will want to listen to.

Below we will look at some of the ways that reflective listening can be used to enhance the quality of conversation that you have with others.

Reflecting Speech

One of the best ways to show someone you have listened to and understood what they said, is to reflect or paraphrase the content back to them. This reflection should be short, simple and easily understood. If you reflect for too long, you may irritate the speaker or cause them to lose their train of thought.

An effective reflection will summarize what the person has said, cutting through the waffle and highlighting the key points. This is important to remember, as using reflective listening skills does not simply mean parroting back to the person what they have just said, but rather adding to and assisting the overall flow of the conversation.

Some example phrases of reflective sentence stems that you can use are:

• So, it sounds like…
• In other words…
• It looks like…
• So what you’re saying…
• You mean…
• It seems that…
• I feel as though…

Note how some of these sentence stems use different sensory modalities by using visual, auditory or kinesthetic (feeling) words. This is a common practice that can be found with many neuro linguistic programming (NLP) techniques, as it is believed that we each have a dominant sensory modality in which we best communicate with.

So if you hear someone using very vivid and descriptive words for example, then you may be able to enhance your communication with them by using visual reflections such as “I see what you mean” rather than auditory reflections such as “I hear you loud and clear“.

When using reflections, try to incorporate a sense of uncertainty in your voice when you reflect or paraphrase back to a person what they have just said. If this is done correctly, with a slight upward inflection (higher pitch), it will signal to the speaker a need for further clarification as though you were asking a question.

This will encourage the speaker to continue talking, whilst at the same time making them feel as if you are listening to them and are very interested in what they have said.

Furthermore, this technique can also be very beneficial in helping to create rapport, as it will make a person feel important that someone is devoting their full attention to them. These positive feelings will soon become associated with you, which will then improve the quality of the relationship which you have with that person.

Summarizing

A summary serves to refocus attention on a particular issue. This can be useful when your conversation has wandered too far from the main topic and you want to get it back on track. Summarizing allows you to do this quickly and easily without offending your speaking partner, and gives you control over the direction of your conversation in a non domineering way.

In order for a summary to be effective, it must be relatively brief and well-balanced to cover all viewpoints. If someone thinks that your summary is inaccurate or biased, this may lead to disagreements or even an argument about the points being made.

This of course, is something which you definitely want to avoid, as disagreements and arguments will both quickly break rapport and make it much more difficult for you to communicate effectively.

The best times to use summaries during a conversation are:

• Whenever emotion and argument are clouding the issue.
• When your views are not being properly recognized, appreciated or understood.
• Whenever you feel it is time to conclude a conversation/agreement.
• After reaching an agreement to make sure that your understanding of what has been agreed to is exactly the same as the other person’s understanding.

Reflecting Feelings

The use of reflective listening in communication involves not only reflecting words, but also reflecting feelings. This is most applicable when someone talks to you in an emotional way, such as when they are upset, happy, sad or angry.

Generally, when people display such emotions publicly, there is a subconscious desire for those emotions to be recognized and acknowledged by others around them.

So by reflecting those feelings back to them, for example by saying “you look in a good mood today” or “it seems that really upset you“, you are acknowledging their feelings and telling them that you understand those feelings. As a result, you increase the depth of the communication which you are able to have with them by opening yourself up to nonverbal cues.

This is a slightly more advanced communication technique which can help to rapidly create rapport, although to be used successfully, one must have a competent degree of emotional intelligence as misread feelings can hinder communication and thus make it more difficult to communicate effectively.

Reflecting Moods

Reflecting moods tends to be very effective when dealing with emotional extremes. This is because during emotional outbursts the reflection of that emotional state tends to enhance the intensity of it.

For example, reflecting a positive mood to someone who is already in a good mood, will most likely make them feel even better. On the other hand, reflecting a negative mood to a person who is feeling depressed, will most likely make them feel worse.

So it is important to note that the reflection of moods must be done only when it is appropriate to do so, as when someone is in a negative mood, a straight reflection is likely to be both inappropriate and counterproductive.

In such a case, an opposite reflection strategy is necessary by conveying a good mood in order to lift a bad mood. This is known as “leading”, because you are using your emotional state to lead the direction of another person’s emotional state.

Benefits Of Reflective Listening

Below is listed a summary of the main benefits that can come from using reflective listening skills in your interactions with others.

• Encourages the other person to keep talking.
• Corrects misunderstandings, false assumptions and misinterpretations.
• Reassures the speaker that you are listening.
• Gives you a much deeper insight into the needs of a person.
• Helps you to remember what was said.
• Builds rapport and mutual respect.
• Shows that you have good listening skills.
• Shows that you have good communication skills.