The overlooked soft skill: Make listening something you work on in 2018

Have you ever met someone and really liked them but couldn’t quite put your finger on why? It’s probably because of their interpersonal skills and their ability to really listen to others.

Ask yourself if you’ve ever practiced your listening skills? I for one haven’t until recently. For something so important, that we put to use in our daily lives, it’s also one of the most neglected. There’s the assumption that you’re either good at it or you’re not. I certainly think I’ve got some improving to do which is why I was curious when come across the 8 levels of listening.

We alternate between different listening levels depending on our moods, what we’re doing and the situations we’re in. Levels 7 and 8 are the most difficult to perfect. I’m not claiming to be at level 8 or even close but I felt I should share my learning.

The 8 listening levels:

• Passive/not listening: when you’re too busy daydreaming, or engrossed in the latest episode of your favourite tv show. What you’re hearing is like background noise. We’re all guilty of it.
• Responsive/Pretend listening: when you’re not really listening and just using nods, smiles, ‘yes’, ‘of course’ and ‘ahhh’ etc. to make it seem like you’re listening.
• Bias/projective listening: also known as selective listening, when you only hear what you want, often dismissing the speakers views.
• Misunderstood listening: it’s in the name. This is when you haven’t really understood what you’ve heard and only hear certain parts of the conversation. You unconsciously overlay your own interpretations and make things fit when they don’t.
• Attentive listening: when you’re paying attention and listening but mainly for selfish reasons. This could be for fact gathering to do with things that help you and not necessarily the person. For example when you attend a networking event.
• Active listening: when you understand the speakers feelings but often involves mimicking what the other person says/does to create comfort but still largely for selfish reasons.
• Empathic listening: when you’re not only listening with your ears but your eyes and your heart. You’re listening to try to understand. You’re looking out for body language, semantics, tone of voice, facial expressions and you’re able to see and feel the situation from the speakers position.
• Facilitating listening: this is the highest level, when you’ve fully understood what’s being communicated to you and haven’t considered yourself when listening. It’s devoid of any personal motives and material gain. It’s empathetic listening but with the added ability to put the needs of the speaker before your own by extending a helpful approach – this aspect isn’t necessarily present in empathic listening.

Practice by really hearing people out, even when you disagree with them. I’ll be trying to make more of an effort to not only physically listen but to also pay attention to how it is said as well as body language. Something I’ll also be practicing is not interjecting with ‘uh huh’ or ‘right’ and nodding profusely while I hear someone out as this isn’t always interpreted as encouragement but can be seen as judgement or even discouragement.

The issue is how do you get to level 8 when we’ve always got backchatter and things were thinking about? Practice – that’s the only way.

I’m hoping writing this will hold me accountable and encourage anyone else reading this to be more present, more aware and thoughtful of how we listen to others.