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Learning

You are attending an online meeting, but you get distracted by a ping on your instant messaging platform and completely lose track of what the speaker is trying to convey.

Then, you take a moment to apologize and ask, 'Sorry, I got distracted by something. Could you please repeat that?'

Relate much?

Today at a glance:

• What is active listening?

• Why does active listening matter?

• How can we become better listener

What is active listening

As I am writing this newsletter, I am reminded of a poem that’s etched in my heart from high school:

Active listening, in my humble opinion, is staying genuinely curious in a conversation and listening with the intent to understand rather than to reply.

Harvard Business School writers Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg describe active listening as an interplay of three things:

• Cognitive - Collating all the implicit and explicit information relayed by a speaker

• Emotional - Managing our emotional responses such as annoyance or boredom

• Behavioral - Conveying interest verbally and non-verbally.

Active listening, although we often do it on autopilot, has many layers to it, such as those mentioned above; if consciously acted upon, it can really impact how we form relationships.

Which is a great segue into our next topic.

Why does active listening matter?

Writing this newsletter made me distill into these top 3 reasons on why it matters:

• You are saving the speaker energy from repeating themselves, thereby saving yourself the time and energy of listening to something twice.

• You forge deeper trust by showcasing the importance of the speaker.

• You present yourself as someone perceived by the speaker as being actively invested in their perspective.

How do we become better listeners?

In a couple of articles I read in preparation for this newsletter on tips to become better listeners, the one that resonated with me the most was this:

I have a personal anecdote to share on this one: I recently interviewed for a role, where towards the end, I asked the interviewer, 'Do you have any feedback on the way I interviewed?'

She said, 'I really liked the way you took a couple of minutes to collect your thoughts after every question and gave me a more structured response.'

Which made me realize that, during an interview, when the stakes are high and we all wish to put our best foot forward.

There was a big learning moment for me there: to employ that same tactic even in everyday conversation.

Pausing is powerful if used effectively.

Prompt

PS: I took ChatGPT’s help to come up with today’s prompt and it suggested to “think of a person who is a good listener”. I did a UNO Reverse on the question.

Try the Original ChatGPT question if you prefer it as well.

♟️ My own response to the Prompt:

Needless to say, I won’t name the person here.

After everytime I have expressed my opinion; they often respond with

“No, but I think…” “No, but I guess..” “No, but the thing is..”

It makes me feel that they are diminishing everything I have said. That to me is a sign of a “NOT” a good listener.

The point of this exercise is to reflect, what are some things that irk us as the speaker and evaluate if we are doing the same to someone else. Being more aware of it to minimize it as much as possible.

I hope today’s newsletter served you with some insight. If you have feedback, please hit reply to this email and let me know your thoughts. It helps me open up my horizons.

Stay Cute and intentional,

Clerisa Varghese

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