Build practical Active Listening recall with a guided starter pack.
Fully concentrating on what someone is saying, understanding the complete message (words, tone, and non-verbal cues), and responding in a way that shows genuine comprehension.
Level 1: Listening to self (thinking about your own response). Level 2: Listening to the speaker (focused on their words and meaning). Level 3: Global listening (attuned to energy, emotion, and what's unsaid).
Hearing is passive and automatic — sound reaching your ears. Listening is active and intentional — processing, interpreting, and making meaning from what you hear.
Restating the speaker's message in your own words to confirm understanding. It demonstrates you've heard them and reveals any miscommunications.
Mirroring back the emotional content of what someone said — e.g., "It sounds like you're feeling frustrated about this." It validates their experience.
Pulling together the key points of what someone has said to confirm your shared understanding and give them a chance to add or correct anything.
Distractions, formulating your response while they're talking, emotional reactions, assumptions, prejudging the speaker, and being fatigued.
Facial expressions, eye contact, posture, gestures, proximity, touch, and tone of voice. These often carry more emotional information than words alone.
Albert Mehrabian's research suggested that liking/feeling is communicated 7% through words, 38% through tone of voice, and 55% through body language. Context matters greatly.
Brief verbal and non-verbal cues (nodding, "mm-hmm", "I see") that signal you are engaged and encourage the speaker to continue without interrupting.
Posture that signals receptiveness: uncrossed arms, relaxed shoulders, leaning slightly forward, maintaining appropriate eye contact, and facing the speaker.
A framework for non-verbal attending: S-quarely face the client, O-pen posture, L-ean slightly forward, E-ye contact appropriate, R-elaxed manner.