How to Become a Better Listener
Published: 21 May 2017
Published: 21 May 2017
Empathy, understanding and recognition of the patient’s emotions and feelings are crucial to building a therapeutic rapport with the people we care for. However, there are several myths when it comes to listening, such as: ‘it’s the same as hearing’, ‘it’s passive’, and ‘good listening skills can’t be learned or easily improved’.
These are all myths. Let’s look at rebuffing these:
There are five stages of listening that we need to pass through and apply to each conversation:
There are strategies that can be practised to improve your ability to master each stage, and ultimately, become an effective listener:
This strategy focuses on what’s being said during the conversation. Receiving involves verbal and non-verbal communication.
What’s not said can be equally as important as what is. Really focus on what the speaker is saying, not saying, and what they haven’t said.
Maintain your role as a listener – do not interrupt, and avoid assuming you understand what the speaker is going to say before they’ve said it. Lessen the physical distance between you and speaker (but still keep them comfortable), reduce background noise and try to ensure lighting is adequate so that you can see their lips.
Finally, avoid overlapping speech – one person speaks at a time.
A crucial part of therapeutic listening is to truly understand and learn what the speaker means. Relate new information to what you already know but try to see the speaker’s message from their point of view. It is important to be able to link new information to existing ideas and concepts in order to understand the message, but remember that the person speaking may interpret information completely differently to you.
Don’t judge their message until they’ve finished speaking. You could try paraphrasing the speaker’s ideas that appear especially important to ensure you have understood them correctly.
The art of remembering lies in being able to reconstruct a meaning in their message that makes sense to you. This relates to linking new information with your existing knowledge.
Try to focus your attention on central ideas. Repeat these in your mind and avoid focusing on minor ideas. Organise, summarise and categorise what you’ve heard, uniting old ideas with new ideas as they come in.
You will be able to remember key information if you link it to something that you already remember, and by repeating key names and concepts (either internally or back to the speaker).
This listening strategy focuses on making a judgement over the message or information – NOT the speaker. However, it is vitally important to resist evaluating the final message until the speaker has finished communicating. Distinguish facts from fiction, and focus on the argument/problem/issue/message, rather than the speaker. The conversation should never be personal.
Finally, listening involves dual communication – after the initial speaker has finished, you must be able to effectively communicate a response that says, 'I heard you and I understand you'.
There are two types of responses – one occurs during the conversation, and one occurs after.
Responses during should be supportive and acknowledge that you’re listening. These are called ‘back-channeling’ cues, and include affirming sounds and words such as 'yes', 'mmhmm', and head nodding (or other appropriate non-verbal cues relevant to the emotion).
Responses delivered after the speaker has finished should be more elaborate and may show empathy (the acknowledgment you understand the content and feelings associated with the message). After responses may include:
There are some common mistakes that people make during a conversation that indicate the receiver is not listening adequately to the speaker:
The next time you find yourself in a conversation with a patient, family member, or colleague, try applying some of these strategies to improve your listening. You never know what you might hear…
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Question 1 of 3
True or false? You shouldn't judge the speaker's message until they have finished speaking.
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Zoe Youl is a Critical Care Registered Nurse, Nurse Planner and Online Education Manager at Ausmed Education. In this role, she manages Ausmed's Online Education Team which develops Ausmed's online courses, lectures and articles. Before commencing at Ausmed Education, Zoe worked as a Critical Care Registered Nurse in Intensive Care at a large private hospital in Melbourne. She values the ability of education to enable personal and professional growth, is a passionate teacher and has experience as a Sessional Academic teaching undergraduate nursing students. Zoe is a member of the Australian College of Nursing (ACN), the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses (ACCCN), the Australian Nurse Teachers Society (ANTS) and the Association for Nursing Professional Development (ANPD). She holds a postgraduate qualification in Clinical Nursing (Intensive Care) and is currently undertaking a Master of Nursing (Leadership and Management). Zoe was recently appointed the Victorian Branch Representative of the ANTS National Committee. Zoe is committed to improving the health and lives of all people through the development of effective and meaningful education whilst also promoting the impact of unique non-clinical nursing roles. See Educator Profile