Au Yin Chan

Oct 29, 20226 min read

Be an Active Listening Superhero

Active listening skills enable us to connect with others, gain trust and build relationships. But it takes more than our ears to hear. Find out how to build active listening skills and supercharge your connection with those you care about.

When was the last time that you felt really heard and seen? When was the last time that you felt truly connected in a conversation with someone that left you feeling stronger and nourished afterward?

Most of us have one of these active listening superheroes in our lives. They are the go-to person we run to when we have a problem, need a sounding board and entrust with our innermost thoughts.

These active listening superheroes give us their undivided attention and connect with us deeply. They listen without judgement or bias and help us to make sense of the thought jungle in our heads. Talking to them is like giving oxygen directly to our hearts.

In our daily multi-tasking, device-distracted and attention-averted lives, we tend to communicate in abbreviations, always looking for the shortcut to the message.

It's no wonder that conversations become rushed and abrupt and why misunderstandings happen so easily. It's no wonder that so many people feel disconnected even when they see and talk to people daily.

In our recovery from the last 3 years of socially distanced and zoom-screen human interaction, the need to cultivate active listening superpowers is urgent.

As I climbed out of my Covid-19 cave into the world to socially connect with my friends and family, I found that communication skills can feel rusty. Carrying on a fluid conversation took a bit more work and I often worried about what to say next instead of having the confidence to just respond naturally to what was being said.

To be honest, the first social gatherings often left me tired and feeling disconnected.

This week I want to remind us all to be better listeners and strengthen our active listening skills to supercharge our ability to connect meaningfully with those we care about in our lives.

The human species needs to feel a sense of belonging and connection with others to survive and thrive. In fact, Love and Belonging: Friendship, Intimacy, Family, and Sense of Connection in Maslow's hierarchy of human needs.

Source: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - simplypsychology.org

A meaningful human connection is when two or more people interact with each other and each person feels valued, seen, and heard. Successful human connections are free of judgement and result in people feeling stronger and nourished from their interaction.

As we heal from our Covid isolation PTS, we can help each other by being better active listeners and filling the world with more active listening superheroes.

The Difference Between Hearing and Listening

Hearing is the body's ability to receive sound and it happens automatically if you have no hearing problems.

Listening is to focus on verbal (words) and non-verbal (tone of voice & body language) communication to understand the full message being communicated.

In an effective communication process, we need to listen with focus and attention instead of just automatically hearing the words.

Research shows that an average adult spends 70% of their time in some sort of communication. Of that 70% communication time:

45% is spent listening,
30% speaking,
16% reading and
9% writing

Based on the research of Adler, R., Rosenfeld, and Proctor, R. (2001)

Interplay: the process of interpersonal communicating (8th edn), Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt.

If 45% of our communication time is spent listening, then we better make sure we are listening effectively.

Here are 5 tips to make sure you are listening effectively.

Limit distractions and suspend preconceptions that can take focus away from the message being conveyed.
Observe non-verbal signals such as the tone of voice, facial expression and body language as context for the message.
Show interest and encouragement for the speaker to share freely and openly.
Suspend judgment and listen from the point of view of the speaker.
Avoid rushing the speaker and assuming you know what they are trying to say.

Listening is a key component to creating connection and belonging with others. And when done with respect and openness to learning about someone you care about, it can be a nourishing experience.

"One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say."

Bryant H. McGill

What is Active Listening?

The best way to describe active listening is to listen with all of your senses and show that you are giving full attention to the speaker with verbal and non-verbal cues.

There are many clinical infographics and instructions for active listening such as the one below by the Center for Creative Leadership.

Source: How to Use Active Listening Skills to Coach Others - Online Article - CCL.org

While these are tools that I used when I was in corporate learning and development, my personal favourite is more philosophical using the Traditional Chinese character for the word 'ting'/listen.

Source: 5 Listening Insights From the Chinese Character for Listen - Online Article - SkillsPack.com

The Traditional Chinese character for listening is made up of the individual characters of ear, eyes and heart. It encompasses everything that we need to do when making meaningful connections in communication.

Use focus and give undivided attention.
Use your ears to hear what's being said.
Use your eyes to see how it's being said.
Use your heart to feel the emotions being conveyed and empathize.
Use your mind to think and seek clarification without judgment.

In one word 'ting' is everything that we need to feel valued, seen, and heard.

"If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk."

Robert Baden-Powell

Make Yourself Available

The world needs more active listening superheroes.

Conversations on coffee dates and lunches with friends can feel like a competition to talk the most and the fastest to share a story or get a point across. Listening is not really listening, instead, it becomes waiting for your turn to talk.

These interactions can be fun but often are not nourishing connections and can even feel frustrating.

If you have a go-to confidant who makes you feel seen, heard and nourished at the end of your catch-ups, then congratulations, that's your active listening superhero. Think about how you can return the favour.

Being trusted with people's deepest thoughts and emotions can be exhausting when all the conversations are one-way. If you are lucky enough to have someone who actively listens to you, think about how you can be there for them too.

Think about the conversations that you have in a day.

Are you gaining new insights and learning about others throughout your day?
Are people comfortable confiding in you?
Do people come to you for advice?

If the answer is yes to these questions, then you are most likely actively listening throughout your day. If not, then you may want to consider how much of your time is spent talking vs. listening in your daily communication process.

"I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening."

Larry King

Be Generous With Your Listening

Many say that our ability to listen is impacted by our ability to focus.

If you google the average human attention span for 2022, you will find a host of articles that say humans have an average span of 8.25 seconds, shorter than the 9 seconds for goldfish. These articles then go on to list the reasons for the demise of our attention spans such as technology, social media, multi-tasking, and ever-increasingly busy lifestyles.

There are also studies that show how our brains have the capacity to focus based on the type of activity. In the BBC article, Busting the Attention Span Myth, Dr. Gemma Briggs, a psychology lecturer at the Open University says, "It's very much task-dependent. How much attention we pay to a task will vary depending on what the task demands."

I believe that we have the capacity to focus and just need to work on our discipline of focusing and not letting ourselves be distracted. With every weekly blog writing process, the battle with focus and distractions is real.

When something is important to us, we find the focus and attention necessary to do it. Having meaningful human connections in our lives is important in order for us to thrive in life.

The ability to focus on all the amazing conversations we have and learn about the people in our lives through active listening is a valuable life skill that enriches our lives. So let's focus and listen up!

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk."

Doug Larson

Lastly, I end this week with a video on The Art of Active Listening. It goes beyond what the management class told you to do and gets the heart of listening as a leader. Enjoy!