Active Listening
Taking in what was actually said before you start assembling a reply.
The behaviour, in one line: I listen to understand rather than to reply, and I play back what I heard to confirm I got it.
A radio operator repeats the message back before acting on it, because the cheapest place to find a misheard word is before anything happens. Almost nobody does this in conversation, and almost every conversation would survive better if they did.
Half of communication is receiving, and it is the half nobody practises. Most people spend the other person’s sentences building their own, so the reply answers something adjacent to what was said. Listening properly is how you avoid solving the wrong problem, and how you find out the things you did not know to ask about. Digital channels make it worse. Most of what you receive now arrives as text with the tone stripped out, read while doing something else. Half-reading has become the default, and the reply that answers the adjacent question has become the normal one.
| What it is | What it isn’t |
|---|---|
| Listening to understand | Listening to reply |
| Reading it back | Assuming you got it |
| One more question | Your view, now |
| Hearing what was not said | Hearing the words |
What it looks like. Someone brings you a problem. You do not solve it. You say back what you think they said, they correct one word, and the corrected version turns out to be a different problem entirely.
- Requirements of any kind. Half of them now arrive as a message thread, tone stripped out, the real ask three replies down. The gap between what was asked for and what was heard is where most wasted work gets manufactured.
- When someone is upset. The first thing said is rarely the thing. Replying to it accurately still misses.
- Anything you are senior in. The more senior you are, the more people edit what they tell you, and the more of the useful information sits in what they left out.
- Do not draft while they are talking. You cannot compose and receive at the same time, and you will be sure that you can.
- Say it back: “so what I am hearing is…”. The readback is not politeness. It is the check.
- Ask one more question before you offer your own view. The second answer is regularly different from the first.
- Listen for tone and for what is not being said. People often name the second problem first.
- Break it into parts
Four parts: not drafting your reply, playing back what you heard, asking one more question, and reading tone and omission.
- The part that carries it
Not composing your answer while they are still talking. Everything else in listening is downstream of that.
- The order to learn it in
- Practise the readback — “so what I am hearing is…” — where nothing is at stake.
- Then hold your reply until the readback has been confirmed.
- Then add the extra question before you give your own view, and start listening for what is not said.
- Put something at stake
In your next three one-to-ones, ask at the end whether they felt heard — and act on whatever comes back.
- Compress it
Do not draft while they talk. Say it back. Ask one more question. Then speak.
- The smallest useful dose
One conversation a day where you read it back before you reply.
- Anchor it to something you know
A radio operator reading the message back before acting on it. The readback is the point rather than the courtesy — it is how the one word that came through wrong gets found.
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
— Stephen R. Covey
The interactive version is in the course. The diagram, the simulation and the four-question check for Active Listening run in the free course, where your progress across all 24 skills is kept.
Open Active Listening in the course →
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