Listening Skills - Difference Between Active and Passive

An important distinction is made between active listening and just hearing. Active listening is a process - one of trying hard to understand both the content and the feelings of another. Too many people, in a conversation, appear to be listening when in fact all they are doing is quietly waiting for their turn to talk. In fact, active listening is rarely quiet. A person actively listening to another will be making encouraging noises, empathetic sounds and asking short questions to aid their understanding, even repeating what the other person has said to test their understanding. The active listener seeks to grasp the values, emotions and background as well as the facts of what someone else is saying.

Carl Rogers says

"Active Listening is an important way to bring about changes in people ... clinical and research evidence clearly shows that sensitive listening is a most effective agent for individual personality change and group development."

He also says that when people are listened to in this way, they listen to themselves more acutely and that active listening reduces barriers and differences between people.

Norman Maier shows in his research that this skill is, unfortunately, not common among managers.The best sales people are the best listeners.  They get the best information, isolate the best priorities, most accurately identify concerns, worries and needs and are thereby enabled to put forward the most customised and most acceptable propositions.

Article taken from our online Development Academy. For more information visit our website.

Comments

[Ron Krumpos]

Art of listening

While student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I became friends with Carl Rogers, who was respected as one of the leading psychotherapists of his time. He taught me much about the art of listening.

Dr. Rogers said that when we listen, and people know we are listening, it shows we truly care about them. In turn, they will respond by caring about you. It opens communication and also opens hearts. When we accept them as a person, unconditionally, they will be more kind to you.

We should listen without preconceptions, without anticipation and without judgement if we want others to portray what they truly feel. We listen with all our senses, not just to the words which are said. Some people cannot fully express themselves while speaking, so we must try to see them as they see themselves. We should watch for non-verbal clues as to what they really mean: facial expressions, body movements, etc.

While we should show positive regard for the other person, we should also demonstrate our own positive self-regard. We do not react to their negative comments, verbally or physically, even when we disagree with them. When they do ask for our opinion, however, we should respond with our true thoughts and in specifics rather than generalities. We offer our own perspective as other options rather than as contradictions.

Learning to listen aided me greatly in my later career in sales management. When you know what your clients need and what they want, how their previous experiences have formed their judgement, you can better relate your own (airline or hotel) services to meet their requirements and desires. Showing that you care about them indicates that you will care about the people who they will book with your company. I tried to teach my sales representatives that what the customer says is more important than what they say. Empathy for others can lead to success for them.

Listening might seem quite passive as opposed to speaking. It is actually very active. To paraphrase Bobby Kennedy, "I learn while listening. When I talk I don't learn too much." If you think talking helps to spread your own wisdom, you are not really wise.

[Mark]

Bob,

Thanks for your valuable comments

Mark
Call of the Wild