Active Listening

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Active Listening

Active listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Often when people talk to each other, they don’t listen attentively. They are often distracted, half listening, half thinking about something else. When an argument takes place, the participants often formulate a response to what is being said. They assume that they have heard what their opponent is saying many times before. Therefore, instead of paying full attention to the concerns of the other party, they focus on how they can respond to win the conflict.

Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listeners own words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. The listener does not have to agree with the speaker–he or she must simply state what they think the speaker said. This enables the speaker to find out whether the listener really understood. If the listener did not, the speaker can explain some more.

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