Tips for How to Become a Better Active Listener

Soft skills are more important than ever in the business world. In fact, according to GMAC’s Corporate Recruiters Survey, nearly 61% of global corporate recruiters identified interpersonal skills as the most important for B-school graduates to possess for their current job openings.

“Empathy as a skill is even more important to leadership in times of crisis,” Abby Scott, assistant dean, MBA career management and corporate partnerships, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, says. “Having empathy for your employees and customers is critical, and I have to think going forward it will only grow in importance.”

Boris Groysberg, a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School, and Robin Abrahams, a research associate at Harvard Business School, recently shed light on how leaders can become more active listeners, breaking down the subskills involved in listening and how you can improve in them.

REPEAT PEOPLE’S WORDS BACK TO THEM

One inherent, yet simple practice of active listening is the ability to remember what a person has said and repeat those words back to them.

“It makes the other person feel listened to, keeps you on track during the conversation, and provides a pause for both of you to gather thoughts or recover from an emotional reaction,” Groysberg and Abrahams say.

You don’t need to rephrase or reinterpret a person’s words either. In fact, studies have shown that direct repetition often works best.

“Rephrasing what your interlocutor has said, however, can increase both emotional friction and the mental load on both parties,” Groysberg and Abrahams say. “Use this tool only when you need to check your own comprehension — and say, explicitly, ‘I’m going to put this in my own words to make sure I understand.’”

MAKE USE OF NONVERBAL CUES

Active listening isn’t just repeating words to show that you’re paying attention to what someone is saying. Listening can take the form of nonverbal cues as well. Groysberg and Abrahams recommend offering nonverbal cues that come the most natural to you during conversation.

“Eye contact, attentive posture, nodding and other nonverbal cues are important, but it’s hard to pay attention to someone’s words when you’re busy reminding yourself to make regular eye contact,” they explain. “If these sorts of behaviors would require a significant habit change, you can instead, let people know at the beginning of a conversation that you’re on the non-reactive side, and ask for their patience and understanding.”

ASK QUESTIONS

Asking questions is key to demonstrating active listening. And if you aren’t sure if you’re asking enough, you probably aren’t.

“[Asking questions] both improves the other person’s experience of feeling listened to, ensures that you fully understand their message, and can serve as a prompt to make sure important details aren’t overlooked,” Groysberg and Abrahams say.

REGULATE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES

How you react to what a person says can say a lot about how you feel and what you think. A strong active listener will regulate their emotional response and steer the conversation in an effective manner.

“You don’t want to respond in a way that will cause the other person to disengage,” Groysberg and Abrahams say. “Nor — and this is a subtler thing to avoid — do you want to fall into the easy defense mechanism of simply tuning out what you don’t want to hear, or rushing to discount or argue it away.”

Sources: Harvard Business Review, Graduate Management Admissions Council