Improve Your Relationships and Negotiation Skills by Cultivating a Practice of Active Listening
My conversations tended to go in circles and meetings were a waste of time—until I learned real active listening skills
“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” — Dalai Lama
Seven months back, we had a communication workshop in my office, regarding the importance of active listening in our life. I was unaware of the word itself till then, its importance, and its actual meaning.
Until then, my conversations with colleagues used to just go in circles without getting to any solution. This had led to more meetings and just wasted my time. At first, I started learning about active listening only to improve my professional life, but it became so much more than that.
When I did start researching more about the topic, became aware of my communications with others, and started implementing some exercises to improve my listening, I saw a tremendous change in my everyday activities. The main results were that my mind became calmer, I was able to negotiate matters with people and get my work done from them, I was more open to others’ opinions and thus, was able to gain their trust and build better relationships.
Improving your active listening skills can improve every aspect of your life, irrespective of your profession. It improves your negotiation skills, your relationships with your family, friends, and colleagues, quality of life, everything.
What Is Active Listening?
Active listening is not about simply giving attention to others, but also showing them in verbal and non-verbal signs that you are digesting what they are saying:
- Understanding their unsaid words and emotions rather than focusing on only their words.
- Seeing their point of view without any judgment from your side.
- Putting yourself in their shoes and thinking of why they feel the way they do.
It makes the other person feel valued and as a part of the conversation. You understand another person’s perspective and thus earn trust from others, avoid misunderstandings, become a better team player, better partner, and a better person in general.
Why Is Active Listening Important?
Recently, I watched a TEDx talk, The Power of Listening by William Ury, where he explains the importance of listening during negotiations. But when I thought more about his points, I found out that they were relevant to every aspect of our life.
1. Helps us understand the other side
We negotiate and communicate with people every day, to make them understand our perspective, solve problems, get solutions, and make things work in every aspect of our life.
When you are trying to bring about a change or make things work for you by changing the other person’s mind, how can you do it if you do not understand what is going on in the first place? If you do not understand where they are coming from? What if the other person’s perspective is a better and a simpler solution to your problem?
We often underestimate the importance of understanding the other side and try to push our opinions on others. We forget that this does not work on us, it will not work on others either.
2. Helps to connect with other human being and builds trust
Have you had situations where you feel you can work extremely well with a particular person or team? Have you ever wondered why? Because there would be honest communication between you two/your team members. In good teams, you can express your thoughts and opinions about the matter at hand freely, know that others value your opinion. You have that trust and bond with them.
Nothing matters to us more than feeling valued—that we are a part of a bigger cause or process. When we get that trust, we outperform.
Now reverse the situation. You need to make the other person feel the same to build trust, form relationships, and ultimately get the work done.
3. Makes it more likely for the other person to listen to us
When you actively listen and make the other person feel valued and build trust and the relationship, you will likely receive the same. As simple as that. There is more probability of that person listening to your thoughts and opinions in this case because you have done the same. This leads to honest conversations, with no communication gap, thus leading to a workable solution.
When you become ready to listen to others, they will automatically become more open to listening to you.
“Active listening costs nothing but brings huge benefits .”— William Ury
If It Is So Important, Why Do a Lot of Us Not Listen?
Subconsciously, many of us do know the importance of listening. But we never implement it consciously. Why? Below are the three main reasons:
1. Because we are thinking only about ourselves
William Ury says that many times in our conversations, we listen to what the other person is saying and our mind is also processing our opinions simultaneously. this puts the focus on us rather than the speaker.
Even good listeners are often guilty of critically evaluating what is being said before fully understanding the message that the speaker is trying to communicate. Because we as humans, usually tend to overlap our judgments and bias to the words/sentences we hear from others and form an opinion ourselves without first thinking of the speaker’s perspective.
We have a tendency to overlay our experience with what we are listening to, which can lead us to become very selfish, not realizing the impact of our words and actions on others. If we are focused on ourselves (and especially our negative experiences related to the topic of conversation), we put ourselves into a judgemental mindset, forming opinions and biases based on our own thoughts rather than what the other person is actually trying to communicate.
2. We feel that we are always right
Ronnie Polaneczky (in a TedX talk called The Power of Deliberate Listening makes the point that humans fundamentally consider themselves to be right all the time. We think that either we can be right or we can be wrong, nothing in between. But what we forget is that most of the situations in life fall into the grey areas and are not always black and white.
In any discussion, your opinion or answers might be a part of the puzzle. The other person’s solution might complement yours. You would never know about the complete result, till you listen.
It is extremely difficult, but telling yourself that you are not right in all circumstances makes us better conversationalists and opens our minds to different opinions and perspectives. If we don’t, we can find ourselves in situations like not owning up to our problems—and blaming others or becoming very defensive.
3. We do not prioritize what we need to listen to
The human mind can process only a definite amount of information in a minute.
So when you multitask, you do not have complete focus on one activity or task, and you tend to be neither here nor there.
When you have multiple tasks to handle, prioritize what you need to focus on first. In a conversation, that means paying attention to only the conversation.
Losing focus leads to multiple follow-up items and communication gaps in understanding, resulting in bad decisions and outcomes.
The points above revolve around what we are doing. I would like to reiterate the point that we tend to receive what we give. By becoming a better listener, my voice is also heard. If I am more open to other opinions, my own will be welcome, too. As simple as that. If active listening does not take place, most of the time we just end up going in circles, reaching no endpoint or solution.
How to Make Active Listening a Habit
So now that we have read about what is active listening, what is its importance, and how we tend not to implement it ourselves, I want to talk about how to inculcate yourself to do active listening in your everyday life.
Even though it might seem difficult at first, daily practice produces dramatic changes. These tips and methods required consistency over a long period for me to achieve results. It requires questioning yourself, your beliefs, letting go of your biases, your judgments, and your stereotypes, enough to respect the other person’s thought process.
I have implemented these methods for over six months now, and have seen positive changes in my relationships, both at home and at the office. However, I also know that I have a long way to go. I hope they help you, too.
1. Clear Your Mind Completely (or as Much as You Can)
Our brain is the most complex machine on earth. It has so much going on, which leads to you having multiple thought processes going on in your head. Thus, it becomes so much more difficult to focus on the other person and listen because of higher levels of noise and distraction caused by your brain.
You need to clear your mind to listen.
What to do:
When you know that you are entering into an important meeting or going to have an important conversation, take a minute to spend time with yourself. Take deep breaths and meditate for a specific period according to your convenience. Go to a silent place and do not talk. If you’re not able to find a silent place, at least do not talk.
In Julian Treasure’s Ted Talk, 5 Ways to Listen Better, he advises spending three minutes in silence, without any distractions for a day, to clear out your mind. To reset your ears and to recalibrate, so you can hear the quiet again. You can combine this practice with meditation.
What helped me out
When I started to practice clearing my head, I used to meditate for five minutes a day and also take one minute before entering into a meeting or conversation. These practices helped me a lot. I felt much calmer and at ease. If you are someone like me who has stage fright, this will also help you in group situations. I was able to absorb more information in my meetings, and my attention span also increased. Later on, as I kept practicing, I needed less time to clear my head.
When I started, I was not able to focus on anything. My mind was easily distracted. So to solve the issue, I used guided meditation videos on YouTube. They helped me a lot. There are hundreds of them available and you can choose anything according to your preference. If you start overthinking when you focus on yourself, focusing on a particular object in your surroundings for a minute helps too.
2. Remove Distractions
Distractions take your focus off the matter at hand and reduce the effectiveness of your listening and your conversation. The more distractions you have around you, the more you tend to get distracted by those elements.
Your speaker notices if you are distracted, and this hinders their own flow of thought or emotions. Many times it just pisses people off.
I am sure many of us have got irritated because of the other person using their phones or looking at other matters when we were trying to communicate something to them.
What to do
Make sure you attend your meetings in quiet places. Close your door. Make sure you have a good internet connection and close all other apps or tabs on your browser (in case of virtual meetings). Put your phone on silent. Face the wall and sit (for meetings), or sit in a corner (for face to face communications). Block your calendar out for meetings, let people know that you will not be available for that period.
Switching your phone off helps. If you can’t do that, setting up an emergency bypass for contacts who must be able to reach you can help. Your solution to this might be different, but the ultimate goal is to minimize the number of distractions you’ll have during the conversation.
What helped me out
Since I started practicing active listening after the COVID lockdown, preventing distractions became easier. Only two people are staying in my home (my husband and me) thus there were not many distractions. I tried a combination of all practices mentioned above, and all of them have helped me tremendously.
I am also a person who keeps a lot of tabs open on my laptop and have the habit of shifting between them. So closing all the tabs, except the ones necessary for the meeting, helped me a lot. Earlier, I had a habit of browsing my phone on Instagram or Facebook in meetings (where I did not need to talk). Uninstalling all the social media apps and switching off my phone during my work time helped me a lot.
3. Focus Only on the Speaker and Not on Yourself
Okay, let me warn you, practicing this was extremely difficult for me.
I was always a person who used to think and form opinions about the words heard simultaneously when the words were spoken. And the response also used to start forming in my head. Many times, I ended up interrupting people when they spoke but hated it when other people did that to me. This reduced the quality of my conversations, which I do regret.
But the good news is once I put a conscious effort into improving my thought process, the relationships and trust automatically followed.
What to do
Listen to what the speaker is saying and focus only on that and store it in your brain. Before you need to respond, take two to three seconds to think of your response and then talk. Do not do both processes simultaneously.
With time, you’ll start being more aware of your thoughts by default. That will become normal.
What helped me out
In the beginning, I used to still end up thinking simultaneously, but I started becoming more conscious of my thoughts. When I realized I was repeating the mistake, I would tell myself and reel back to focusing on the speaker.
I also have written on a piece of paper and stuck it in front of me, “Focus on the speaker”. So this also acted as a reminder for me in the COVID times. Hopefully, I would be able to remind myself enough when we start the face to face meetings again. But I know that I am on the path to reprogram myself.
I am still not there yet, and would probably need more practice, but the number of interruptions by my thought processes has reduced. When I do get interrupted by them, I take less time to get back my focus on the speaker.
4. Be Ready to Accept Mistakes or Opposite Opinions
For as long as I remember, I have always been a defensive person. I used to always feel that I was right. It took a lot of patience from my parents or spouse, to just make me sit and realize that I have gone wrong somewhere. I hated to be proved wrong. I am sure there are many of you out there, who have similar characteristics or faced similar situations.
And this attitude also impacted my relationships. There are two paths you can take from this attitude: becoming defensive or blaming others. Once I realized this, I started making effort to stop making the same mistakes.
What to do
Ask questions—it’s as simple as that. When I did meet someone whose opinions were different than mine, instead of taking only their words to my heart, I used to question them, “What made you think like this?” or “What was your thought process behind this?”
When you do this, you get to know about the other person’s perspective about the particular matter, instead of judging them outright and understanding them more. This leads to an honest conversation and solves the issue if there is one, or you get to a conclusion.
One or more of four things tends to happen:
- You realize you were right (Yay!!)
- You realize the other person was right and why
- Both of your solutions are part of a puzzle and fit right in
- You understand each other’s perspectives (you realize that both of you were right in your ways, one person doesn’t need to be completely right or wrong. Life is full of grey areas) and try to come to a common ground.
What helped me out
Open conversations with my partner and journaling were the ones that helped me the most. I am lucky to get a partner who is so open to different opinions, and more importantly, who is a good listener. Every day after work, we used to take up one incident that occurred that day and discuss how it could have been handled differently. What was my mistake and how could I have improved?
And writing the lessons I learned for the day also helped. It made my journey more real. I also tried to not make the same mistakes or have the same biases the next day. The keyword here is “tried.” The change took much longer than I expected. But it was okay. Something is better than nothing, is what I used to tell myself.
An internal transformation is never easy. Letting go of stereotypes or bias that has been imbibed into you from birth, is ever more difficult. There is no shortcut to this. Take as much help as you can from your near and dear ones. Constantly questioning yourself is the key.
5. Try Not to Judge Others
This sounds easy but is very difficult to implement.
When do we judge? When we feel someone is doing something which is not normal, or wrong, according to us. For example, when I used to wear only jeans, my grandmother used to force me to wear traditional clothes, because women never wore jeans in India before. According to her, women were supposed to look womanly (I still do not know what that means).
She judged me because there was a particular picture of a woman in her head, of what she could do or not, and I did not fit into the picture. I would not tell her she was wrong, but expecting me to fit into her picture was wrong.
We meet people like this every day, right? And we judge others. It can be outfits, accents, the way they walk, anything, and everything. We do this because they behave differently from our pictures/boxes.
Once you understand that each of us is different, and each of us must do what suits us, your mind widens. You become more open to other opinions and become ready to listen to theirs. Thus leading to honest conversations and active listening.
What helped me out
Again, this was being more conscious of my thoughts. Whenever I felt my judgments creeping in, I had to reel it back. Fundamentally, I had to understand that each of us is different and we have our own opinions. This had to be done by me, using my mental strength.
I started taking feedback from my spouse and friends for this. Whenever they felt I was not open to listening to their opinions, they let me know. I used to write down the number of times I let my judgments crowd me at the end of the day. When writing down, I asked myself why I behaved or acted in a certain way.
Ask yourself: why do you judge others? What makes you do it? How can you improve? Writing this down would help you a lot and would make you more aware of your emotions.
6. Know That When You Listen, You Would Be Listened To
That is how I started. When I did try to listen actively for the first few times, I realized that if I listened to people, they listened to me back. And then I started seeing a pattern of the same. This proved to be true most of the time.
What helped me out
We all are selfish right? Selfish with our time, energy, money everything. So I started to listen actively because I was selfish. I started to listen actively because I wanted to be listened to. I started to value other people because I wanted to feel valued. I wanted to solve the matter, move forward, and not go in circles and waste time. I started doing all things because I wanted to get things done to save time.
And it is completely okay. If it is also improving the other person, then why not? If I can negotiate, solve problems, clear out situations, then why not?
Have faith that active listening will improve your life. You do it for the results that will show up in your activities and emotions. And this takes time and experience—it cannot be taught.
Some Exercises to Help You in Improving Your Listening Skills
In his TEDx Talk, 5 Ways to Listen Better, Julian Treasure explains five exercises to improve your listening. I am going to explain them here, in addition to some other exercises which worked for me:
1. Practice 3 minutes of silence in a day
I explained this practice earlier in the article. Set aside three minutes of your time, according to your preference (preferably in your mornings) for silence. If not able to find a silent place, at least try to be silent yourself.
2. The Mixer
If you are sitting in a crowded place like a coffee shop, try to segregate the noises in your head. Distinguish between the number of incoming channels/voices/noises that you are listening to.
3. Savoring noises
Try to savor even mundane sounds. It can be anything from your mixer to your washing machine, to the whir of your computer, to your husband typing when he works. Anything. Pay attention to them, find music, and beats in them, they would become more interesting.
4. Listening positions
Be aware of your listening positions. There are a lot of them: Active|Passive, Reductive|Expansive, Critical|Empathetic; be aware of your emotion and train of thought when listening to someone. Over time, try to switch and move between your listening positions.
5. RASA
Rasa is a Sanskrit word for juice or extract. And an acronym. It stands for:
R — Receive
A — Appreciate
S — Summarize
A — Ask
Do this for every conversation you have and practice it.
Below are the exercises that worked out for me:
6. Start a conversation with a stranger
Earlier while taking public transport, I used to just plug in my earphones, listen to music, and be in my world. From the time I became conscious of my listening skills, I stopped doing that and tried to start conversations with strangers. The conversation starter could be anything from appreciating their clothes, talking about the weather, or even smiling. Anything. There are a lot of advantages to this method:
- They are usually far more entertaining than music
- You do not know them, thus you do not have any judgments or bias towards them. This increases the chances of you listening actively
- Your networking skills increase and you never know who you might end up talking to. It might be a very good opportunity for you (I know of people who have received job offers through carpooling or bus rides)
7. Take a minute to think about the thought process behind a tweet or a post
I am not a social media person. But when I do go through them, I try to take a minute to think about, “What would that person’s thought process be behind this post?” Many times, I also try to start conversations and help people through comments.
Again you never know how you form relationships. I have friends who are Medium writers who were formed because of those comments.
8. Practice all the points mentioned above by listening to a lot of speeches
I started listening to a lot of speeches, mainly TEDx Talks from the past few months. Whenever I felt like I needed to practice listening, I used to tell myself that this is a conversation. And try to apply all the points mentioned above at the same time. Notice whether I am thinking about myself during the time, judging the speaker, or focusing on their emotions or just the words.
This helped me a lot since I knew subconsciously that I am not being judged. So I could freely focus on my thoughts alone.
Active listening plays an important role in every aspect of my life. It improves my relationships, builds trust, and in general makes my life better.
I sincerely hope this article motivated you enough and provided you with enough actionable tips to keep you going. Remember, everything takes time. Be patient. Don’t beat yourself up if you do not meet your expectations in the beginning. It is completely okay. At least you are trying, there are so many people who aren’t even doing that.
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
— Jim Ryohhn
Happy Active Listening!
