Active Listening

Listening is a key communication skill. The problem is that most people confuse hearing with listening.

Active listening is a skill that is absolutely foundational to success in many areas of life. This book teaches how to use this vital tool.

Improve your listening and you can watch your relationships develop and success begin to flow almost effortlessly.

We can all recall situations where we have utterly failed to listen to what
someone else is saying. For various reasons, we are simply not taking in
anything useful. How many times have you been introduced to a person by
name only to not know what their name is thirty seconds later?
The reason this happens is because you have failed to actively listen. By
italicizing the word “actively”, it might suggest that actively listening is
different to plain old listening. In truth, there are only two states when we are
communicating with another person: actively listening, and not really
listening.
Active listening is the art of listening for meaning. For us to gain meaning
from the words of another person, we need to be listening carefully. Meaning
is not necessarily assured even when we are actively listening, but we will at
least know that we don’t understand, and can therefore ask the correct
questions to gain enlightenment.
Active listening must become a habit because it is the foundation of effective
communication. Imagine a troop commander not really listening to his orders
and attacking the wrong target. A failure to actively listen can certainly have
dire consequences.
Many people give the appearance of listening but fail to really hear what is
being said to them. They assume that listening is such a basic sense that it will
happen automatically. This is not the case. Or it might be that they are so used
to making all the outward gestures of listening that they are convinced it is
really happening. It is not difficult to pick up on tone of voice, body language
and facial expressions, all of which indicate the gist of what is being said. All
it then takes is to hear a few key words and it becomes very easy to think you
have understood everything you’ve been told, and to give the convincing
impression that this is so by returning appropriate tone of voice, body
language and facial expressions.

Contents
Legal Disclaimers & Notices ........................................................................... 2
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 4
Why It Is So Important To Actively Listen ...................................................... 6
Common Barriers to Active Listening ............................................................. 8
The Four Components of Active Listening .................................................... 11
Improving Your Active Listening Skills ........................................................ 13
Reflective Listening ....................................................................................... 18
Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 22