13 September 2022

How many times have you listened to someone who is telling you their story or is pouring their heart out to you, and you have found that you have come away knowing them better for it? When a person speaks, they reveal a lot about themselves. So, if you want to know a person better and understand their situation, motives, dreams, and desires, then it makes sense to listen more closely. 

While most of us can hear, not all people have the ability to listen as attentively as others. Therefore, listening is often listed as a desired skill set when it comes to working with others especially when it comes to building relationships.

When you start to listen to a person you gain more insights such as: 

• Understanding what they expect of themselves and you

• Build better relationships with family, friends and your coworkers

• You will be able to resolve issues more quickly

• Have a better understanding of what people are trying to tell you

• You will know how to respond properly

• You will become a trusted and respected person

The moment you present yourself as someone who is not listening, the trust level another person has in you drops substantially. There are actually physical and mental barriers that you need to overcome in order to become good at listening.  The most common ones include things like:

• Prejudice

• Language and accent barriers

• Noise levels 

• Fear

• Anger

• Worry

• Poor attention span

• Hearing issues

Some of these barriers are going to prevent even the best listener to fully understand the person or hear the full story properly from the person speaking to them. A great example of this is trying to listen to someone who is not speaking their native language while they are speaking to you about what they want to share with you. They may use the correct words, but the biggest handicap is their accent. No matter how hard they try to pronounce words correctly they are just not understood.

So, what can you do if you are having a hard time understanding someone? A good active listener will often try to do the following things to improve their comprehension of the situation. 

• Move in a little closer

• Maintain eye contact

• Nod and smile to indicate that you are listening

• Ask appropriate questions

• Try to clarify the issue or information in your own words

By doing these things you are showing the other person that you are doing your best to understand them. This can be very helpful and can put the person speaking at ease. Quite often they are feeling stressed out, nervous and anxious, especially if you have only just met them. By helping them to tell their story, explain their situation, or to put their feelings behind them, they can often explain their situation or tell their story better. 

As you can see it is not that difficult to improve your listening skills. Just be aware that there are problems that can prevent you from fully understanding a person sometimes. Even the best listener will at times need to make the extra effort to connect and understand someone else when the person speaking to you needs an ear to listen to them and hear them out.