Listening Skills: Definition, Examples, & Tips

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph. D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Listening skills are critical to building connections with others. What goes into good listening and how can you be a more effective listener? Read on for examples and tips.
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I grew up in a busy household, the oldest of four siblings who all had activities going on and friends coming in and out of the house. It was a home where little details could often get lost in the cacophony of everyday life, and sometimes I wished more attention would be paid to what was happening in my life.
That said, I will forever be grateful that when I really needed help figuring something out or processing my emotions, I could go to my mother in the little room where she painted, read, and watched TV. When I sat down with her, she would give me her undivided attention: the TV was turned off, she turned to face me, and she kept eye contact as long as I wanted it. She listened intently and gave me empathy and honest counsel.
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It was in that room, and to a lesser extent in my father’s home office, that I learned about good listening skills. I carry those experiences into my work as a therapist and my time spent with friends and family who ask for my ear. That said, I have learned so much about how to listen well in adulthood, and so can you. Let’s look at some examples of good listening skills and tips for building your listening skills.

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What Are Listening Skills? (A Definition)

In this article, we are going to focus on listening skills for relationships. The biology of listening, how one listens to a lecture or a musical piece – these are topics for another day. Good listening skills for relating to other people involve three stages (Bodie, 2012):
 
  1. taking in the explicit and implicit information another person is providing you; 
  2. synthesizing the information you’re getting and relating it to what you already know; and 
  3. responding to the other person by (a) showing you are paying attention and (b) asking clarifying questions. This is sometimes called active-empathic listening.
 
Let’s look closer at the empathy part of this listening. According to Carl Rogers, one of the most famous psychologists and therapists of the twentieth century, people only feel truly heard and accepted when we “feel with” them (Rogers, 1957). In active listening, we show that we are “feeling with” somebody in the third stage, or the responding stage, of listening.
 
This can happen on two different levels: cognitive and emotional. Suppose I am listening to a client tell me about the stress her older brother’s alcoholism is causing her family. When I think to myself, “It must be so hard for her to worry about him and to see her parents worrying about him, too,” and she sees my facial expression mirror her own worry and sadness, I am empathizing with her on a cognitive level. I am taking in and understanding how emotionally impacted she is, and giving her a clear signal that this process is happening for me.

For me to empathize on an emotional level, I would need to tap into my own emotions – hypothetical or real – in such a situation. When I hold her gaze and respond to what she is saying with, “I know how hard it can be on family members of people with addictions. I can feel how much this is weighing on you,” she will know that she is being listened to, but also that I am “feeling with” her.
 
We cannot underestimate the centrality to good listening skills of empathizing and showing that you empathize (Rogers, 1957). When we communicate, unless we are doing so for purely transactional reasons (e.g., “I’d like a medium coffee with creamer on the side, please.”), we want to feel fully seen and heard. It is the job of a skilled listener to not only take in and understand what is being said, but to also communicate a respect for the humanity of the person sharing it.

Why Listening Skills Are Important

This kind of listening is considered a critical prosocial behavior (Drollinger et al., 2006), meaning that it promotes connections with other people and increases satisfaction in relationships (Floyd, 2014; Gearhart & Bodie, 2011). Research tells us that people experience empathic listening as a form of affection from another person (Floyd, 2014).
 
Listening skills are especially important if you want to be a supportive presence in somebody else’s life. Clients report feeling more comfortable with and able to self-disclose to their therapists when their therapists are clearly using the listening skills described above (Myers, 2000; Rogers, 1957).

Benefits of Improving Your Listening Skills

Simply put, improving your listening skills will make it easier to develop and maintain close relationships with other people. People with strong listening skills score higher on measures of social skills (Gearhart & Bodie, 2011), so it stands to reason that improving your listening skills might improve your overall social life.
 
If you are in a romantic relationship, or would like to be, you should know that many, if not most, relationships that end do so because the people involved felt that they could not be heard by their partners (Amato & Previti, 2003; Gottman & Levenson, 2002; Hawkins et al., 2012). Another benefit of improving your listening skills is that you may become more able to understand your own emotions and empathize with yourself (Barrett-Lennard, 1997).

Examples of Listening Skills

Let’s look at a couple examples of listening skills (Nemec et al., 2017). Some of the most concrete and effective listening skills have to do with the responding stage because they encourage the person who is speaking to keep going, so we will focus on those.
 
Paraphrasing: When we paraphrase, we simply try to put what the other person has said into our own words. It’s not repeating back to them exactly what they said. Putting their point in your own words shows them that you were listening closely enough to internalize what they said and can explain it yourself.

If you are not sure how to do this, I recommend keeping in mind a formula such as, “you feel X because Y.” For example, if I said, “I just couldn’t believe he didn’t ask anybody else what they wanted before he went ahead and made the reservation”, you might paraphrase back, “you felt surprised because he made that decision without consulting anyone else.”
 
Open-ended questions: Asking open-ended questions shows the speaker that you as a listener are interested in what they are saying and curious to know more. If you told me, “I’ve got so much to do before I leave for the holidays at my parents’ house,” I might ask, “How are you feeling about going home?” or “How’s it going getting through that to-do list?”
Silence (Buffington et al., 2016): At certain times, sitting in attentive silence shows that you are actively listening. Especially when somebody is upset, it may be more effective to simply wait for them to say more, while showing that you are paying attention by keeping your nonverbals focused on them (e.g., watching them, staying turned towards them).
Reflecting feelings back (Ivey et al., 2015): When feelings are running high, people often find it very helpful to have those feelings acknowledged by listeners. For example, if a housemate comes home and spends several minutes telling me about how demanding their workday was, I might simply reflect to them, “Sounds like a frustrating and exhausting day.”
 
For more listening skills, check out this video from a communication coach:

Video: Effective Listening Skills

Listening Skills Exercises

Here is a listening exercise commonly taught to couples who are learning to improve their communication. We call it the Speaker-Listener Technique (Pearson et al., 2005). One person is the Speaker and the other is the Listener, and the pair switches between roles at regular intervals. (It can be helpful to have some kind of object, like a talking stick, to indicate who is currently being the Speaker.)

Here's how it works: The Speaker starts sharing on a topic that matters to them. Once they have shared a few sentences’ worth, they pause, and then it’s the Listener’s job to paraphrase back to them what they heard. No arguing back, no interpreting or telling your own side of the story – the Listener’s only job is to paraphrase. 

Once they’ve done that, the Speaker gets to tell them whether their paraphrase was effective and gets to clarify any points the Listener missed. The two people keep this structure for a couple more rounds – the Speaker sharing and the Listener paraphrasing – until they (or their therapist) agree that it’s time to switch roles.

This is one of the first activities I would typically do with couples who are new to therapy. It might sound rudimentary, but it’s harder than you might expect. When sensitive topics come up, all of us can get so attached to our own opinions and needs that our listening skills fly right out the window. I may try to listen to you, but I am really just waiting to insist on my version of events. The Speaker-Listener technique forces everybody to slow down. It gives conversation the structure that it needs so that each person actually feels heard and understood.

Couples often find this activity equal parts challenging and gratifying. It is calming to know that your partner is not going to immediately dispute or dismiss what you have to say. I think this listening skill is particularly effective in any conversation where there is emotional charge or conflict.

Listening Skills in the Workplace

Listening skills are also helpful in the workplace. Research tells us that when supervisors practice using active listening skills with the people they are managing or training, those employees experience a greater sense of self-efficacy and lower levels of stress and anxiety (Levitt, 2002; Mineyama et al., 2007).

Tips on Listening Skills

My first and most important listening skills tip for you is that listening is both verbal and nonverbal (Bodie et al., 2015). This applies to both the speaker and the listener. When you are listening, you want to pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the speaker, not just their words. Oftentimes, these nonverbal signals give you more information about how the other person is feeling or what they’re thinking – and this information might contradict what they are saying. For example, if a friend tells you, “I don’t really care where we go for dinner,” but they break eye contact with you in the middle of the sentence, they might actually have a preference but are holding it back.
 
As a listener, your nonverbals matter a great deal, too. You can demonstrate to another person that you are actively listening to them by holding eye contact, mirroring their facial expressions (or, if there is little emotion in the conversation, by just smiling), moving closer to staying close to the person, and keeping your body open and oriented toward the other person (Burgoon et al., 2010). Research tells us that speakers perceive all of these behaviors as indicating that the listener is paying close attention to them (Jones & Guerrero, 2001).
 
Listening Skill: Non-judgmentIn addition to these more concrete tips, I would encourage you to consider more of the key aspects of effective listening according to Carl Rogers (1957). Rogers emphasized that therapists should show to their clients that they are not judging what they hear, but rather have what he called “unconditional positive regard” for their clients.
 
While I do not expect us to see only the good in other people in our day-to-day conversations, listening to others with a genuine willingness to see the best in them will make us more empathic and effective listeners. One way we can do this is to try to identify what kinds of biases and judgments we might bring into listening. For example, I do my best when I listen to a speaker from the opposing political party to acknowledge that I may unconsciously listen only for things I can disagree with in what they are saying. While it takes effort not to do that, it can help me be a better listener when I don’t listen with my bias.

Articles Related to Listening Skills

Want to learn more? Here are some related articles that might be helpful.

Books Related to Listening Skills

To keep learning, here are some books to explore:​​

Final Thoughts on Listening Skills

We all get plenty of chances throughout the day to practice and hone our listening skills. If you are interested in practicing and improving yours, I recommend starting off with modest goals. You could pick just one relationship in your life that you would like to deepen and make a commitment to implementing some of the listening skills mentioned here. You just might find that both you and the speaker quickly start to feel closer to each other when you push yourself to use your best listening skills.

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