If you’re a manager or team leader, you know that a crucial part of your job is listening to your team members. But are you really hearing them? Or are you just waiting for your chance to respond? Here is how active listening can help make you more empathetic with your team members, and better able to understand what they are saying.
What is Active Listening?
Active listening is a communication skill focused on being fully present in a conversation. When you are actively listening, you have set aside distractions and tuned out your inner monologue to focus fully on what is being said to you. The goal is not just listening to your team members, but truly and deeply understanding what they are saying to you. When employed regularly and intentionally, it communicates respect and improves your ability to empathize and connect with the speaker.
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Active Listening vs Listening to Respond
A lot of people assume they are actively listening any time they are engaged in conversation. But the truth is that active listening takes more than just being ready to respond when your time comes. All too often, team leaders prioritize responding and providing answers over truly understanding what their team members are telling them. But this can cause you to be so preoccupied with your own thoughts that you don’t process the words you hear, and more importantly the message behind them. Some of the key differences between active listening and listening to respond include:
- Attention: When you are actively listening, your attention should be on the speaker’s words, tone, body language, and other non-verbal cues. While listening to respond, you tend to pay more attention to your own thoughts, opinions, and counter-arguments.
- Focus: Active listening requires you to be singularly focused on the conversation at hand, not multitasking or splitting your attention between the speaker and your own priorities.
- Body Language: Your own body language is key to communicating that you are actively listening. By making eye contact, keeping your body open, and emoting, you show you are listening. In contrast, while preparing a response you may look away, interrupt, or become restless or fidgety.
Why You Should Use Active Listening When Engaging with Team Members
Active listening isn’t just a sign of respect. It also improves your ability to comprehend the messages being conveyed to you. That is why you should be actively listening to your team members any time you are discussing priorities, goals, or interpersonal concerns. Active listening, and the empathy that results, can:
- Build Trust: Team members who know you are actively listening to them can trust you to listen and respond to their concerns. This encourages open communication.
- Facilitating Conflict Resolution: Because active listening improves your understanding of the speaker’s situation and emotions, you will have improved insight into how to resolve the conflict and find better solutions to the problems.
- Improving Responsive Leadership: Active listening makes it easier to empathize with the speaker, and that allows you to better understand the needs and emotions of your team members, which in turn results in better leadership decisions.
- Improved Team Communication: By modeling active listening, and encouraging team members to adopt the technique, you can improve your whole team’s ability to communicate more effectively, reducing repetition and forgetfulness and improving collaboration.
The end result of putting active listening at the center of your leadership is a team that listens to one another, feels heard, and works more effectively together, all of which translates to increased productivity.
Effective Active Listening Techniques to Try in Your Next Team Meeting
If you have decided to start actively listening to your team members, there are several strategies that you can use to improve your focus and convey your interest in what they are telling you:
Have Important Conversations in Person (or on Video)
Body language and focus are such important parts of active listening, but they are difficult to impossible when communication happens via text alone. Any time you are having an important conversation, from goal setting to conflict resolution, those conversations should be had in person, if possible, or at minimum by video call. This will help you improve eye contact and clue in to the subtle non-verbal ways your team members are telling you how they feel.
Ask Open Ended Questions to Encourage Deeper Responses
When actively listening, you want to find ways to encourage your team members to speak openly and thoroughly about their positions, and the reasons behind them. One way to do this is by asking open ended questions (that can’t be answered yes or no). This encourages everyone involved in the discussion to expand the conversation beyond the surface, and engage with deeper considerations like motivations, obstacles, and priorities. Avoid interrupting or shutting down a speaker while they are talking. Give each person time to fully express their position before responding.
Take Time to Clarify and Follow Up
Take an active interest in your speaker’s position and how they reached it, even if you disagree with it. Rather than shutting down and retorting with your own perspective, ask follow-up questions to clarify their meaning. Try to understand what thought process led them to their conclusion. It may help you realize a different perspective you had not considered before.
Echo Back Responses to Ensure Comprehension
One way to reduce misunderstanding and close communication gaps is to paraphrase what a speaker tells you before responding to it. Using phrases like “So you’re saying…” or “I feel like you want…” you can echo back the speaker’s position, letting them know that you hear them, and are taking their position seriously.
Model Active Listening to Build a More Engaged Team
Business leaders, managers, and team leaders need to prioritize active listening as a leadership skill. By using the tool yourself, and modeling it in your team meetings, you can pass that skill along to the rest of your team. By putting active listening at the center of your communication strategy, you will improve comprehension, retention, interpersonal relations, and ultimately increase your team’s productivity, creativity, and results.
David Stanislaw and Karen Sherwood are leadership and executive coaches with 70 years of combined experience. Together, they apply their psychodynamic training and extensive experience to help leaders, business owners, and employees develop emotional intelligence skills and facilitate conflict. Contact us to meet with Stanislaw Consulting today.
This post was written by a human without the use of AI. Stanislaw Consulting does not consent to the use of its online content to train large language models or other forms of artificial intelligence.
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