Series: The Art of Listening

The ability to listen is thought to be one of the major components of a good relationship. Whether you want to be a good parent, good partner, a good boss, a good friend or a good colleague, listening skills are your best relationship investment.

It is not as easy to listen as we might think. The common misconception is that listening is just passively lending your ear to someone. It is not. In order to be effective, listening has to be a lot more active than that.

Research suggests that men and women think different about listening. Listening cues like nodding, saying “yes”, “mmmm”, “uh huh” are interpreted differently by each gender. Men think they are an indication that someone agrees with them, while women think that they indicate how involved the listener is. So when women don not hear these cue, they think the man is not listen. When men hear these cue, they think the woman agrees with them.

Read The Art of Listening: I Can’t Hear You! »

Listening is an essential part of every relationship. But not everybody listens in the same way. In this chapter of the Art of Listening, I want to introduce you to the different types of listening.

In the previous chapter, I covered 10 situations that make it hard for people to keep listening. In this chapter, I will explain the four listening types: the kind listener, the empathic listener, the critical and the solution focused listener.

The kind listener is very supportive, encouraging and always on your side. They are best friends and always manage to interpret whatever you say in a positive light. They won’t challenge you because their aim is to make you feel good, valued and cared for.

Kind listeners are easy to be around. They are generally loyal and trustworthy and are very good conversation companions. Their relationships are usually better and last longer. Empathic listening is an important tool for being good parents.

Read The Art of Listening: Listening Types »

To wrap up our the “The Art of Listening” series , here are some great tips on how to become a better listener.

To start off, we discussed 10 situations that turn off the listening switch and make it harder to keep engaged. In the previous post, I shared four listening types: the kind listener, the empathetic listener, the critical listener and the solution focused listener.

In this post, I will share ideas of how to become a kind listener, an empathetic listener, a critical listener and a solution focused listener and how to use each of these listening styles when appropriate.

Read The Art of Listening: How to Listen »