We may be retelling a funny story or teaching a class. We may be giving vital directions or sharing an intimate part of our past with a new partner. It might be blatantly obvious why active listening is important but if you're not so sure why you might want to try active listening skills and techniques, it can be helpful to consider the purpose of interpersonal communication. In contrast to passively listening, the active listener has a clear goal in mind: to capture and reflect both the emotional experience and the ideological perspective of the speaker (Rogers & Roethlisberger, 1991). Active listening takes effort and requires the purposeful use of an array of techniques and strategies (discussed below) to ensure you really comprehend the speaker's intended message. To do this, it can be helpful for you to respond both verbally and nonverbally, to communicate comprehension (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). On the other hand, active listening is the active process of listening to understand. Across these examples, we aren't explicitly or intentionally doing anything aside from listening.

Sometimes, we pay attention to particular sounds and tune out others, like in conversation when we focus on the presenter in a noisy auditorium. We listen to our neighbor's dog bark every time a package is delivered. We listen to people talking at the next table at our favorite restaurant. We listen to cars bustling down a busy street. Soundwaves are picked up by our auditory nerves and through a complex set of steps that I don't even fully understand, our brain registers the stimuli as sound.įor the most part, this process is automatic and doesn't require us to do much of anything. Listening is a passive process of hearing (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). But before we get into all of that, let's talk about what it means to listen.

To put it plainly, active listening is listening on purpose.

Empathic listening meaning