Active Listening: Definition, Skills, Techniques & Exercises

By Aleja Parsons, Ph.D. Assistant Professor NYU
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
What is active listening and why might you want to learn how to listen actively? Discover tips and techniques for better listening here.
Have you ever felt like you weren't being listened to? Or, have others told you that you didn't listen to them? If so, that wouldn't be surprising because listening is hard and many of us could benefit from improving our active listening skills.  In this article, we’ll talk all about active listening, how to do it, and why it's important.
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What Is Active Listening? (A Definition)

To put it plainly, active listening is listening on purpose. But before we get into all of that, let's talk about what it means to listen. Listening is a passive process of hearing (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). Soundwaves are picked up by our auditory nerves and through a complex set of steps that I don't even fully understand, our brain registers the stimuli as sound. 

For the most part, this process is automatic and doesn't require us to do much of anything. We listen to cars bustling down a busy street. We listen to people talking at the next table at our favorite restaurant. We listen to our neighbor's dog bark every time a package is delivered. Sometimes, we pay attention to particular sounds and tune out others, like in conversation when we focus on the presenter in a noisy auditorium. Across these examples, we aren't explicitly or intentionally doing anything aside from listening. 

On the other hand, active listening is the active process of listening to understand. To do this, it can be helpful for you to respond both verbally and nonverbally, to communicate comprehension (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). Active listening takes effort and requires the purposeful use of an array of techniques and strategies (discussed below) to ensure you really comprehend the speaker's intended message. In contrast to passively listening, the active listener has a clear goal in mind: to capture and reflect both the emotional experience and the ideological perspective of the speaker (Rogers & Roethlisberger, 1991). 

It might be blatantly obvious why active listening is important but if you're not so sure why you might want to try active listening skills and techniques, it can be helpful to consider the purpose of interpersonal communication.

Why Is Active Listening Important

We tend to speak to be heard. We may be giving vital directions or sharing an intimate part of our past with a new partner. We may be retelling a funny story or teaching a class. Whatever the context, when we speak, we almost always want people to understand our message the way we intended for it to be understood. 

At the core of this desire is our human need for connection. The problem is, despite how badly we want to be heard and understood, communication often isn't quite so streamlined. Even with the best intentions, you and the person you are speaking to can leave conversations feeling unheard, invalidated, and misunderstood. When these things happen, instead of our need for connection being met, we may instead feel isolated and lonely. On the other hand, when we use active listening skills properly, we give ourselves the chance to understand and be understood by others. In other words, active listening can help us meet our need for connection. When you look at it this way, active listening is not only important but, dare I say, necessary.  

You don't have to take my word for it; the data agree with me too. Active listening, as a cornerstone of effective communication skills, benefits our romantic, platonic, and professional relationships. Active listeners are rated as more emotionally in tune (Bodie, Vickery, Cannava, & Jones, 2015) and highlighted as pivotal in restoring relationship injuries (Min, Jung, & Ryu, 2021). On the flip side, communication failure, or miscommunications likely due to an absence of active listening skills, can lead to avoidable errors and mistakes with disastrous consequences (Berger, 2015)

How to Listen Actively

You might be thinking, if active listening is so beneficial, why do so many people struggle to do it well? For one, there are cultural differences that influence how we communicate we are listening and there are group differences in how those different feedback styles are perceived (Stubbe, 1998). That means, depending on my identity and background, I may be accustomed to using a particular set of active listening skills in my community that are different from the set of skills the person I am in conversation with is expecting. This unspoken mismatch can leave both parties frustrated and confused. 

As a personal example, I recall having to adjust to what I initially characterized as a cold and distant form of communication when I first moved to the Northeast from the South. Over time though, as I learned more about my new cultural context, I recognized that the norms for communication in New York were just different than those in Atlanta. Once I adjusted to my new environment, I was more equipped to both identify and appreciate this new communication style. Behaviors I initially misread as distancing, like the occasional grunt and point I get from a stranger on the subway trying to call my attention to something I dropped, I could now experience as an opportunity for connection.    

Moreover, some topics are particularly polarizing and our beliefs and ideas about these issues are tied so tightly to our identities that it can be hard to be an active listener to someone with opposing views. Depending on the power dynamics at play, active listening may feel like the willful silencing of your community or voice (Sue, Lin, Torino, Capodilup, & Rivera, 2009). On the other hand, researchers have found that using these skills may be even more important in difficult conversations and an agent for progress and change (Ferri & Connor, 2014).
Being an active listener means making the choice not to speak, not to contribute your opinion, not to defend your perspective or belief, and not to offer solutions or suggestions.”
Does personality affect active listening?
Beyond these cultural considerations that trickle down and affect our ability to be active listeners, individual characteristics and personality traits can also make active listening hard. For one, active listening requires self-control. When trying to listen, many of us are instead are mentally assigning judgment to the things we've just heard. We may be asking ourselves, is the speaker right or wrong? Do we agree with the idea we've just heard or not? Do the ideals or values align with our own? We are often using these types of questions, and our assumptions about their answers, to help us prepare responses. 

Many of us also fall into the role of problem-solving as it's common to feel a need to "fix the issue" being presented to us. With the best of intentions, we may connect the speaker's story with an experience of our own and provide input based on the strategies we've found helpful in the past. The problem is, if we are readying our response or coming up with solutions while someone is speaking, we are likely not fully being present and engaged in first listening and understanding the speaker's experience. 

Remember, the goal of active listening is to understand. Our rush to share our perspective or resolve an issue can leave the speaker feeling unheard, embarrassed, and often even stalls their willingness to take action because they haven't yet been able to talk through and process their perspective (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017).

Being an active listener means you have the awareness that when it comes to effective communication, both parties cannot be the speaker at the same time. Being an active listener means making the choice not to speak, not to contribute your opinion, not to defend your perspective or belief, and not to offer solutions or suggestions for change in service of first fully understanding the speaker. Below are four core skills that can help you accomplish this goal.

Active Listening Skills

Now that we have a clear sense of what many of us do wrong, and why it might be helpful to change, let's look at the cornerstones of active listening. There are four key pillars of active listening: preparation, open-ended questions, paraphrasing, and reflecting feelings (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). I will first define each skill and in the following section, I offer examples and pointers to practice each pillar. 
 
  • Preparation means setting yourself up for success by stopping other tasks and making sure you have the mental, physical, and emotional capacity to focus on the conversation.
  • Open-ended questions are questions that require the speaker to elaborate on her/his perspective. In contrast, closed-ended questions give the speaker a limited selection of responses (often yes or no). 
  • Paraphrasing means to restate the speaker's content in your own words. While it may seem redundant and unnecessary, simply repeating back what you've heard communicates that you're paying attention and understanding. 
  • Reflecting feelings asks you to listen empathically—to empathize with the speaker by imagining how you might feel if you were in the speaker's shoes. The more you can name the emotions, even if they haven't stated them, the more the speaker is likely to feel acknowledged and validated. ​

Exercises for Active Listening

Like anything else you're new at, practice can help you master these new skills. Here are some examples and exercises to help illustrate how you might use these active listening skills in conversation. 
 
Preparation 
Just last week I had to pause a therapy session for a bathroom break. Aside from being embarrassing, it also broke the flow of our connection and halted the flow of conversation. Preparation helps us avoid just these types of "I can't believe this is happening to me" moments. Here's a shortlist of questions you can ask yourself to help you prepare to be an active listener. 
  • Do I have the time for this conversation?
  • Have I attended to my physical needs? (e.g. Am I hungry? Am I tired?)
  • Have I cleared my mind so I can listen with presence?
  • Am I emotionally ready to have this conversation?    

Open-ended questions
Open-ended questions help facilitate the speaker sharing as much as possible. The more you can get the speaker to talk, the easier it can be to understand what she/he is trying to communicate. For example, rather than saying "Do you like chocolate cake?" (closed-ended), you might ask "What do you like about chocolate cake?" (open-ended). The latter question keeps the conversation flowing and allows you to gather more details and nuance about the speaker's perspective. One of my personal favorite follow-ups is "Tell me more about that." which is technically an indirect lead (Gerber, 2003), but functions the same as an open-ended question. 

Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is my all-time favorite active listening skill. When I'm paraphrasing, I think of myself as a mirror reflecting back the speaker's message. Of course, I'm putting the speaker's ideas into my own words so the conversation doesn't become robotic and uncomfortable but ultimately, it's nothing more than repetition. Here are key questions you can ask yourself to help develop paraphrasing skills: 
  • What was the most important takeaway of what I just heard?
  • If I had to summarize what I just heard, what would I say?
  •  What does the speaker think about this topic? 

It's important to remember that when you're paraphrasing, you don't have to agree with the speaker. As one of the hidden benefits of paraphrasing, by repeating back to the speaker what you just heard, you're able to catch and correct any miscommunications. You can prompt this process by asking the following questions after paraphrasing:
  • Did I get that right?
  • Did I miss anything?
  • Is that what you were trying to share? 

Reflecting feelings
Empathy can be hard and overwhelming because many of us aren't used to doing it. For me personally, my first reaction when my daughter tells me she's sad is to try to cheer her up. Instead, reflecting feelings encourages me to just verbally express that I know and understand how she's feeling. Rather than "Don't worry, things will get better." I might say, "Wow, sounds like you're really upset." Rather than, "Why don't you just [insert solution to fix the speaker's problem]" I might say, "So are you saying you're feeling overwhelmed and stuck?" Speaking of my daughter, here's a clip from a movie we enjoyed together that illustrates what I'm talking about:

Active Listening Examples

Now that we've covered the main pillars of active listening, let's bring it all together with some examples. Here's a video example of some of the skills and techniques we've discussed so far:

Video: Active Listening is a Skill

Active Listening Techniques

​If you're anything like me, it can also be helpful to have a quick list of the important takeaways to help reference as you practice a new skill. If that's helpful for you too, here's a list of dos and don'ts of active listening based on the pillars discussed in more detail above. 
 
Dos:
  • Meet your needs before the conversation
  • Reflect back the content 
  • Empathize with the speaker
  • Ask open-ended questions
 
Don'ts:
  • Don't interrupt
  • Don't pass judgment judge
  • Don't be distracted

Articles Related to Active Listening

Want to learn more about topics related to active listening? Here are some more articles to read.​

Books About Active Listening

Want to keep learning about active listening? Here are some good books to check out:

Final Thoughts on Active Listening

In summary, active listening is a critical skill that can help us feel more connected in what can feel like an isolating world. It can be hard and requires intention and effort. Notwithstanding, to me, giving someone the gift of being seen and understood and receiving that same gift in return is worth it. You might want to try some of these skills and techniques out and see if you agree.

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