How to be a good listener

Richa Pant provides guidelines to help you achieve this skill.

The skill of listening is probably more required and used than any other kind of skill. The average student spends around 20 hours per week in class listening (or only 'hearing', which is different from listening). Like other skills, listening takes practice and there's room for improvement in us all.

Listening is an active process having three basic steps:
Hearing: This means just catching what the speaker is saying. This itself isn't real listening, only a part of it.

Understanding: This is when, after hearing something, you try to interpret it in your own way.

Assigning a meaning: After understanding it, place it into the right context and make sense out of it.

Tips for being a good listener

- Choose a seat away from distractions, where you can see and hear well.

- Maintain eye contact and pay full attention to the person who is speaking. Don't look out the window or at something else in the room.

- Focus your mind. If you feel your mind wandering, try changing the position of your body and concentrate on the speaker's words.

- Focus on content, not delivery. If you are counting the number of times your teacher has taken a sip of water or cleared his/her throat during the class period, you aren't focusing on content.

- Avoid being emotional. If you get emotionally involved in listening, you hear only what you want to hear, and not what's actually being said. Remain objective and open-minded.

- Listening is an active process, and not a passive one. Concentrate on what's being said so that you can process the information in your brain.

- You can process thoughts about four times faster than speech. With practice, while you are listening you will also be able to think about what you are hearing and give feedback to the speaker.

- Let the speaker finish before you begin talking. Otherwise when you interrupt, it seems as if you aren't listening, even if you really are.

- Allow yourself to finish listening before you start speaking. If you are busy thinking about what you want say next, you can't really listen.

- Listen for important points and main ideas. Pay special attention to statements repeated often, or those that are emphasised by the speaker.

- Ask questions. If you are not sure you have understood what the speaker has said, you can try putting the matter into your own words and then asking.

- Give feedback. Nod every now and then to show that you understand. When appropriate you may also smile, frown, or laugh. These will show the speaker that you're really listening.

— The writer is a freelancer based in India.