Episode 28: Listening with Purpose: The Path to Deep Connection Through Active Listening

Have you ever wondered how much more you could connect with the people around you by just listening a little better? This episode of Full Circuit with Shawn is all about the transformative power of active listening and how it can improve every interaction you have, from a casual chat with friends to a high-stakes business meeting. I'll guide you through the nuances of paying undivided attention, not just with your ears but with your entire being, as we navigate the art of concentration, understanding, response, and retention. Expect to discover the subtle differences between empathetic, critical, and appreciative listening, and how each can serve you remarkably well in varying contexts.

In our conversation, we tackle the common barricades to good listening, such as the onslaught of digital distractions and our own emotional filters. I share practical tips on creating an environment conducive to active listening—think device-free sanctuaries and carving out intentional tech breaks. By the end of this chat, you'll be armed with strategies like paraphrasing and posing open-ended questions, all designed to elevate your communication game. So whether you're looking to build stronger relationships, enhance trust, or simply want to understand the world from another's perspective, this episode is your gateway to becoming the listener everyone wants to talk to. Join me, and let's connect more deeply in this noisy, interconnected era.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Full Circuit with Sean. I'm your host, sean, and today we're talking about active listening. So if we want to define active listening, we can define it as four unique elements, and they are fully concentrating, understanding, responding and remembering. So fully concentrating, so you give your undivided attention to the speaker, without distractions and we're going to talk about distractions Understanding, you grasp the meaning and the context of the speaker's words. Responding, providing appropriate feedback and engaging with the speaker's message. And then remembering, so we want to retain the information shared by the speaker for future reference and for a follow-up.

Speaker 0: 0:45

Now, the importance of active listening involve personal relationships, professional settings and conflict resolution. So if we look at personal relationships, they can enhance your empathy, your trust and your intimacy. In professional settings, they improve communication, teamwork and productivity. And then in conflict resolution, they improve communication, teamwork and productivity. And then, in conflict resolution, they facilitate understanding, again with empathy and negotiation. So let's look at some key elements of active listening. So we give our full attention, we need to avoid distractions and focus entirely on the speaker. And then we need to show that we're listening right so we can use verbal and nonverbal cues, like we can nod, we make eye contact and we make appropriate facial expressions. We can provide feedback so we reflect on what the speaker said and we show that we understand and we encourage them to continue sharing with us. Now what we want to do is defer judgment. Okay, we want to avoid interrupting, we want to avoid forming our opinions too prematurely. And then what are some techniques we can use for improving our active listening skills? So we can paraphrase, we can summarize the speaker's words into our own words and we can confirm that we understand. We can ask open-ended questions so you encourage the speaker to elaborate and share more details with you. We can reflect our feelings so we can acknowledge and validate the speaker's emotion to foster empathy and rapport. We can offer support so we can express empathy again and offer assistance or encouragement if required.

Speaker 0: 2:28

However, some of the challenges and barriers to active listening are, say, internal distractions right. So your mental preoccupation or personal biases or even your assumptions as you're listening can hinder your understanding of what's being said. External distractions so noise, right. Interruptions, environmental factors If you have kids, they can disrupt your listening process and emotional barriers. So it could be very emotional, it could be like strong emotions, you could be angry, you could have anxiety, and those will also prevent effective communication and even understanding what the speaker is trying to say.

Speaker 0: 3:08

And now there are different styles of listening, I know right. There's empathetic listening, so this is where you focus on understanding the speaker's emotions and their feelings. There's critical listening, and in critical listening you basically analyze and evaluate the speaker's message in your head and then you question assumptions and you identify, you know, logical flaws or inconsistencies. And then there's appreciative listening. So this is more around expressing appreciation and enjoyment for the speaker's message and you specifically focus on the positive aspects that you're seeking to understand from their perspective and what we find in, say. Empathetic listening is very valuable in personal relationships because it can build trust, it gives you an emotional connection and provides support. And it can also be very useful in conflict resolution, so it can help to descale tensions, it promotes understanding and, again, it facilitates that empathy between the conflicting parties. If we look more at critical listening, so it's very important in academic and professional settings. It enhances problem-solving skills, it encourages analysis of information presented. It's also very useful in decision-making processes because it allows for objective evaluation of different options and leads you to open for, say, consideration of alternative perspectives. And if we look, finally, at appreciative listening. So this more enhances the positive interaction, so more supportive and uplifting atmosphere in personal and professional relationships, and it also fosters creativity and innovation, so encourages openness to new ideas and new perspectives, which, at the end of the day, leads to more collaborative brainstorming.

Speaker 0: 5:06

Now, technology has definitely impacted our active listening and the skills that we have had developed over time without the digital technology right. So there's digital distractions and constant access to your smartphone or social media and notifications, and it can lead you to a divided attention and a reduced focus. We have shortened attention spans right Because we have our habitual use of digital devices and they have shown to contribute to a decreased patience and difficulty in sustaining attention for extended periods of time. We've also shifted in the way that we communicate, so you text all the time, everybody texts all the time, and we send emojis, and those really limit the opportunities for verbal and nonverbal cues and they affect our listening comprehension. We now have the tendency to multitask, and you know it. You engage in multiple tasks simultaneously while you're online right, and this can inhibit the deep understanding of complex topics when you're talking to somebody. We also have our filter bubbles or our echo chambers, which are online algorithms that can reinforce existing beliefs and preferences, and this limits the exposure to more diverse perspectives and more challenging viewpoints.

Speaker 0: 6:31

So how can we minimize the effects of the digital world in distractions while we're trying to actively listen, of the digital world in distractions while we're trying to actively listen? So the first thing we could do is establish device-free zones or device-free time, so we designate specific areas or even periods where digital devices are prohibited, and this creates opportunity for very focused, distraction-free conversation. We can use our phone features such as, you know, do not disturb or utilize an app to temporarily silence notifications during important discussions, and it's one thing that I do when I walk into meetings is I immediately turn my phone to silent not vibrate, but absolutely silent and I leave it in my pocket until I get out of that meeting. And we can even schedule device breaks right. So we can intentionally schedule breaks from digital devices to allow for an uninterrupted, focused interaction and active listening with others. And we'll go through a few of those when we get into incorporating active listening into our daily routine.

Speaker 0: 7:34

So we'll get into that in a minute, but before we do, we need to talk about self-reflection and our continuous improvement, and we talk about self-reflection in a lot of areas of our life. Okay, so it's not just active listening, but we need to do it in active listening. So we need to recognize personal listening habits. We need to be self-aware of our listening habits and that involves acknowledging individual listening strengths and our weaknesses and our biases right. We need to identify barriers to effective listening. So we need to look at our past experiences and they can reveal some common obstacles like distractions, like maybe our digital distractions and some of our preconceptions, some of our emotional triggers and things that really hinder our active listening. We can try to cultivate empathy and perspective taking so we can be self-aware that we're trying to get to someone else's perspective or someone else's bias.

Speaker 0: 8:34

Now, are there any exercises that we could do to improve or understand our listening habits better? And we can do reflective journaling right, so we can keep a journal to record our thoughts, our feelings and our observations about our listening experiences. Right, so we can reflect on instances of effective and ineffective listening, or I try to notice any patterns or reoccurring challenges. We can then do active listening role play, so where we get a friend or a partner and we exercise and practice listening in simulated conversations or scenarios, and you can even take turns playing the role of listener or the speaker, and then we can discuss our experiences and insights. And there are some advanced techniques you can use in active listening. So, as you get better, you can do mirroring right.

Speaker 0: 9:32

So mirroring involves paraphrasing or reflecting back the speaker's words or the speaker's feelings, or even the speaker's emotions, to demonstrate understanding and even empathy. And what can happen is it can build rapport and it can really deepen the connection between you and the speaker. There's also reframing. So reframing is like it's offering alternative perspectives or interpretations of whoever's talking and their words or experiences. It's also used to broaden the speaker's understanding and challenge limited beliefs and even facilitate problem solving or perspective taking. And then we have summarizing. So summarizing is more. It's just basically condensing and restating the key points or the themes of the conversation, and it's really good in clarifying complex information or reinforcing your understanding and promoting synthesis and reflection.

Speaker 0: 10:32

Now, if we look at some of our daily routines so say, family dinner okay, how many people have heard that you don't have your phone at your family dinner? And that's a good thing, right? So we go to our family dinners, we set the time for our family dinners, so we're ready and we're focused, and then we put away our phones, we turn off the TV and we practice listening. But we also practice it by eye contact, nodding, we ask open-ended questions and we encourage everyone's participation. And that will show genuine interest in your family member's day, their thoughts, their feelings, and even validate their experiences with empathy and understanding.

Speaker 0: 11:16

Now let's say we're in a different situation. We're in a team meeting, right? So we want to create a supportive and inclusive environment where team members feel heard and valued. So we start by establishing some ground rules right for respectful communication, such as taking turns and don't interrupt people and obviously put away your phone. And then, in that team meeting, we practice our active listening skills by paraphrasing others' points, we seek clarification when we need to and we acknowledge different perspectives. And now let's go even further. Let's go to a networking event, right, where we approach conversations with a genuine curiosity about others, about their experiences, about their interests and about their goals. We need to focus more on listening than on talking. We need to allow other people to share their stories and their insights, and a good thing to do at networking events is really practice, mirroring, practice, summarizing. Ask follow-up questions and you will deepen your connections and again, you'll build rapport.

Speaker 0: 12:23

So some resources that can help you learn more about active listening. I would say Just Listen and it's a book by Mark Olson, it's really good and You're Not Listening. So what You're Missing and why it Matters by Kate Murphy, and there are a few more. Of course, linkedin Learning has some courses. There's plenty of TED Talks and Headspace or Insight Timer have sessions on mindful listening and communication and that can really improve your listening skills.

Speaker 0: 12:56

And remember, at the end of the day, everybody wants to be heard. Everybody has a perspective, everybody has an day. Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody has a perspective. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody wants to be engaged and everybody wants to be heard. And everybody's got a story right. I've got a lot of stories. I'll make a good grandfather, but everybody wants to be heard. So the real question is are you listening and are you understanding what they're trying to say?

Speaker 0: 13:26

I'm telling you, if you really hone your skill set into active listening, it will change a lot of how people react to you and a lot of how people listen to you and to what you want to say or to what you need to say, because you heard what they were saying. So this was a bit of a shorter episode today and I hope you picked something up from it and we will be back on the next episode with failure, and it's another one of the Start a Pain series. So failure what is it like to fail, why is it okay to fail and how do you get past failure? So I look forward to chatting with you then and thank you for joining me on Full Circle with Sean.