Active Listening: How It Can Make You a Better Leader

What is Active Listening?

Active listening is more than a concept. It’s a skill and a practice.

When leaders talk about fostering trust within their companies, creating a learning organization, and building a strong company culture, they are talking about concepts that require a high degree of emotional intelligence. That’s because emotional intelligence is critical to building positive and meaningful relationships. It’s what makes for effective leadership.

There are many aspects to emotional intelligence as well as relationship-building. But you can think of active listening as one key step to increasing it, as it is essential to making people feel psychologically safe, heard, and understood.

What is meant by active listening?

Active listening is about squarely focusing attention on another person. It creates a space for people to be more expressive and gives those engaged in the process access to understanding, which in turn facilitates more trust, honest conversation, and in ‘productivity’ terms — innovation, collaboration, and results.

In addition, active listening thrusts us out of autopilot mode and encourages us to pay close attention to the people and world around us. To actually focus on what is being said (and unsaid) by the people and world we engage with.

“There was someone I partnered with who shared something very powerful with me; she is a high achiever, and measures her effectiveness on ‘Getting Stuff Done.’ When she reframed her mentality of achievement so that listening was part of her daily actions (and the ‘stuff’ to get done), it created more opportunities for her.”

- Brian Alvo, Founder of the NextGen Center.

Is active listening a skill?

Active listening is a critical skill that can be cultivated over time and through intentional practice. Meaning it can be learned, observed, assessed, and practiced.

When you actively listen, you increase your own self-awareness, social awareness, and develop a more holistic worldview and relationships with others.

Is active listening passive?

Simply put, active listening requires us to see listening as an active state instead of a passive one.

Unfortunately, taking the time to actively listen is sometimes seen as time ‘drain’ because it may not have a clear, measurable output. It’s difficult to put a checkmark next to it. However, that type of thinking contributes to the productivity trap and reflects a short-term view.

Active Listening Benefits

Let's explore the benefits of active listening from a personal and professional perspective.

Fostering Trust

With time, when your team develops the skill of active listening they will create more opportunities for honest discussion, trust-building, and the sharing of ideas and feelings. Focusing on an immediate output (e.g. my listening did not result in something getting checked off of a list) is a short-term view. Instead, leaders must focus on the connections, relationships, and culture that active listening creates.

To put it another way, active listening can be transformational vs. transactional if it’s practiced intentionally over time.

Better Communication

If you’re extroverted and/or highly communicative (read: love to chat) by nature, chances are active listening could be more challenging for you.

People who are extroverted and feed off the energy from other people may have to learn how to dial down their own communication tendencies and practice listening to others to change their relationships. It may require a different kind of energy that might even be draining.

Self and Cultural Awareness

Active listening is challenging because we biologically think faster than we speak. Americans speak about 125 words per minute on average. When we listen, we have to take words in at a much slower speed than our brain is processing. So, our brains struggle to slow down. Thus, it's natural for our minds to wander when someone is talking to us.

Also, there are cultural differences. In American culture, we tend to relate to each other by sharing our own experiences or giving advice. However, this type of focus (on yourself) may be considered rude or disrespectful in other cultures.

Active listening helps us slow down and take in what someone is saying. It focuses on the other person. It facilitates better communication with others and bridges some of the personal and cultural gaps that may be getting in the way of effective communication and understanding.

Effective Leadership

Often when people transition into a leadership role for the first time, they experience some level of insecurity (like many other transitions in life). This can trigger fears, doubts, and unpleasant thoughts that resemble imposter syndrome.

A common coping mechanism is to overcompensate. For example, new leaders may feel they need to prove themselves and show what they did before, and then they default to telling others what to do.

However, seasoned leaders, those who have transitioned into multiple leadership roles, do something different. Typically, they’ll spend the first 30-90 days meeting and listening to people across their organization to understand what they are experiencing, what their priorities are, and what they see as the future of their role, team, and company. They tune into the needs and desires of their team members and the organization.

I’m here to learn vs. I’m here because I know.

A ‘know-it-all’ approach may work in the short run, but no two organizations or situations are alike. For long-term success and to create an experience-centric organization, leaders need to take the time to listen to drive lasting and sustainable change. In other words, a ‘learn-it-all’ approach will lead to the long-term outlook and trust-building pillars that so many teams and leaders aspire to.

Active Listening Tips

• Listen and reflect on the words and feelings someone displays to:

  • Make them feel heard and understood.

  • Suspend judgment.

  • Acknowledge: “I sense that you feel happy/disappointed/frustrated about this.”

Active listening techniques

Summarize/paraphrase to ensure you understand:

• “It sounds like...”

• “What I’m hearing you say is...”

• “In other words....”

• “To ensure I understand...”

Respond with heart:

• “I see your point...”

• “I see why this matters to you...”

• “I understand why you feel this way...”

• “I appreciate you sharing...”

Final Thoughts on Active Listening

Active listening isn’t a one-and-done exercise. It requires us to shift deeply ingrained habits through intention-setting and practice.

In a world where information is flowing nonstop from different angles, it’s hard to focus and zero in on what’s essential. And that’s where the skill of active listening comes into play.

When we are open-minded, curious, and seeking to understand, then we can do more than listen. We can understand what’s being said on the surface, underneath, and in the world around us.

Kyle Lynch, NextGen Center Foundation for Effective Leadership Participant

Read more about Kyle’s experience with the Foundation for Effective Leadership Program.

Ready to improve your active listening skills?

Learn about the Foundation for Effective Leadership program.