How to improve your listening skills

To improve your listening skills, provide your full attention, use active listening skills, and don't interrupt others. Improving your listening skills can be challenging for some people. Here are some details on the above steps and others you can take to successfully improve your listening skills:

• Provide your full attention

When someone is communicating with you, it is very important to give that person and what they are saying your full attention. Try not to multitask or engage in any other activities that might be distracting during a conversation. Look at the speaker's face, preferably their eyes, and pay attention to what they are trying to tell you.

• Use active listening skills

Active listening skills are crucial to professional communication, and really all communication in general. Active listening requires you not only to hear what someone is saying to you, but also to comprehend and appropriately process their message. Ways to improve your active listening skills include:

• Asking relevant questions

• Paraphrasing what is being said to you

• Giving the person you are communicating with feedback

Active listening is absolutely paramount to improving your overall listening abilities and skills.

• Don't interrupt others

Another key to improving your listening skills is to practice not interrupting others when they are speaking to you. In general, interrupting is considered rude, and it exhibits the opposite of listening, mostly that you are just waiting to speak yourself, instead of actually listening. Interrupting also prevents your communication partner from fully expressing themselves.

This can lead to misunderstandings on your part. Always allow someone to finish speaking before you start to give your response.

• Stay open-minded and don't make assumptions and judgments

It is also very important that you approach each conversation with an open mind. Avoid making rash assumptions and judgments about the person you are speaking to and what they are saying. If you don't do this, you run the risk of misunderstanding what they are trying to tell you.

• Use eye contact

One of the tenets of strong communication skills is eye contact. When you maintain eye contact with the person you are speaking with it helps show them that you are interested, and also increases the chances you are going to pay attention to what they are saying. Eye contact is a great way to stay engaged in a conversation.

• Use empathy

• Note taking

In the professional context, one great way to improve your listening skills is to take notes during the conversation. This should obviously only be done if necessary, but note-taking is a tried and tested method that increases your retention rate. You also then have the opportunity to review the notes after your conversation for maximum comprehension.