Listening Skills: Definition, Examples, & Tips

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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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.

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).

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).
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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:

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.

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

• ​Interpersonal Skills: Definition, Examples, and Activities
• ​Body Language: Definition, Examples, & Signs
• Emotional Support: Definition, Examples, and Theories
• ​​Nonverbal Communication: Definition, Types, & Examples
• ​​Socializing: Definition, Skills, & Examples
• ​299 Deep Questions to Ask: A Guy, Girl, Friend, or Anyone​​​

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

• Amato, P. R., & Previti, D. (2003). People’s reasons for divorcing: Gender, social class, the life course, and adjustment. Journal of Family Issues, 24(5), 602–626.
• Barrett-Lennard, G. T. (1997). The recovery of empathy—toward others and self. In A. C. Bohart & L. S. Greenberg (Eds.), Empathy reconsidered: New directions in psychotherapy (pp. 103-121). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Bodie, G. D. (2012). Listening as positive communication. In T. Socha & M. Pitts (Eds.), The positive side of interpersonal communication (pp. 109–125). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
• Bodie, G. D., Vickery, A. J., Cannava, K., & Jones, S. M. (2015). The role of “active listening” in informal helping conversations: Impact on perceptions of listener helpfulness, sensitivity, and supportiveness and discloser emotional improvement. Western Journal of Communication, 79, 151–173.
• Buffington, A., Wenner, P., Brandenburg, D., Berge, J., Sherman, M., & Danner, C. (2016). The art of listening. Minn Med, 99(6), 46-48.
• Burgoon, J. K., Guerrero, L. K., & Floyd, K. (2010). Nonverbal communication. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
• Drollinger, T., Comer, L. B., & Warrington, P. T. (2006). Development and validation of the active empathetic listening scale. Psychology & Marketing, 23, 161–180.
• Floyd, K. (2014). Empathic listening as an expression of interpersonal affection. International Journal of Listening, 28(1), 1-12.
• Gearhart, C. C., & Bodie, G. D. (2011). Active-empathic listening as a general social skill: Evidence from bivariate and canonical correlations. Communication Reports, 24(2), 86-98.
• Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (2002). A two-factor model for predicting when a couple will divorce: Exploratory analyses using 14-year longitudinal data. Family Process, 41(1), 83–96.
• Hawkins, A. J., Willoughby, B. J., & Doherty, W., J. (2012). Reasons for divorce and openness to marital reconciliation. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 53(6), 453–463.
• Ivey, A. E., Ivey, M. B., & Zalaquett, C. P. (2015). Essentials of intentional interviewing: Counseling in a multicultural world (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
• Jones, S. M., & Guerrero, L. K. (2001). The effects of nonverbal immediacy and verbal person centeredness in the emotional support process. Human Communication Research, 27, 567–596.
• Mineyama, S., Tsutsumi, A., Takao, S., Nishiuchi, K., & Kawakami, N. (2007). Supervisors’ attitudes and skills for active listening with regard to working conditions and psychological stress reactions among subordinate workers. Journal of Occupational Health, 49(2), 81–87.
• Myers, S. (2000). Empathic listening: Reports on the experience of being heard. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 40(2), 148-173.
• Nemec, P. B., Spagnolo, A. C., & Soydan, A. S. (2017). Can you hear me now? Teaching listening skills. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 40(4), 415.
• Pearson, M., Stanley, S. M., & Kline, G. H. (2005). Within my reach. PREP Inc.
• Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 22, 95-103.