A leader’s guide to active and reflective listening 

To be seen and be heard, we first must see and hear others, truly, consciously, genuinely.

Many years ago, as a young engineer who had just emigrated to the United States, I was eager to experience a new culture. 

But I remember getting frustrated meeting new people and failing to engage them in conversation. Why weren’t they curious about me? Why wouldn’t they ask me questions? And why wouldn’t they want to know me when I was so invested in getting to know them, their culture, and their country?

The truth is that I was not listening. In hindsight, I can see that I was so eager to tell my story, to feel seen and heard, that I forgot what drove me to leave my country: it was to hear about other people’s perspectives and learn new things.

Communication is often seen as the art of learning to share ideas, but we often lose sight of the other half of the equation – listening, taking in, and processing others’ ideas.

Why does listening help to improve communication and collaboration?

When we listen, we signal respect. This creates a safe space for participants, which is the cornerstone of communication and collaboration. 

When we take the time to truly listen to people, even if we don’t agree with what we are hearing, two wonderful things happen:

1. People feel seen and acknowledged. This creates a collaborative space. When people feel heard, they are more willing to listen to others in the group. They also feel safer to speak up because they know their thoughts are valued.
2. We learn something. We don’t just learn new ideas but more about the person who is taking the time to share them. When we listen beyond the message, we can learn the underlying values of a person. This provides us with a unique opportunity to find out how to connect with our teammates because we are learning about them on a human level.

The result is an environment where everyone feels safe to be vulnerable and share ideas freely. Communication and collaboration can thrive, and therefore, we enable better decisions and outcomes.

How can we be better listeners? 

For this section, keep in mind that individuals with ADD, ADHD, or other forms of neurodivergence may need different tactics than the ones described here as they may communicate in different ways.

1. Self-awareness

The first big step for me was admitting that I didn’t know how to listen, and it can be for you too.

Start by observing yourself; you don’t have to make any changes yet, but pay attention to your behaviors during conversations and meetings. Take the time to reflect, and if you can, write your reflections down. Here are some questions to prompt the process:  

• How often do you interrupt? Do you find yourself saying “sorry, but…” or cutting off people – even speaking over them? If you are in a remote setting, do you use the “raised hand” feature to speak or wait until there’s a bit of silence to speak?
• What are you thinking about when you are listening? Where are those thoughts taking you? Is your mind wandering to something unrelated, or are you actively thinking about and processing the topic you are hearing?
• What does your body language look like? Are you looking at other things when people are talking? Do you have your arms crossed, or are you fidgeting? Do you nod or give any other nonverbal queues to signal you are agreeing or disagreeing? 
• What’s your reaction when you hear something that triggers a strong emotional response? When someone agrees or disagrees with you, do you let them finish their thoughts or do you feel the need to immediately jump in to add your take? Do you hold onto your “argument” or thoughts, waiting for your turn to speak? This might be a sign that you stopped listening. 

All these tiny clues in your behavior can help you modify the foundations of your listening tactics.

2. How biases affect active listening 

We all have biases and it’s our responsibility to be aware of them so that they don’t get in the way of communicating and collaborating better. We might listen more actively to those that we consider influential or who look like us.

Try to observe your listening patterns and what individuals you’re more lenient to. 

• What do they look like? Do they look like you?
• What titles/roles do they have?
• How often do you pay attention to what they say?

If you recognize that the answer to these questions indicates that you have some biases, try to be proactive. Use this information to better listen to people from underrepresented groups or with less influence. For example, observe your behavior while talking to your boss and then try and replicate it with a more junior team member when they speak. Take it further and ask these junior members to share their opinions.

It is important to consider that our industry is white-male-dominated. Asking ourselves these questions can help us overcome these biases to create psychological safety for people in underrepresented groups.

3. Active listening requires intention

Something I learned from You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters is that listening is like meditating. While listening, your mind will wander, but we have to do our best to bring it back to what the other people are saying. 

Let’s review some strategies that we can apply in these cases.

Taking notes

Make a habit of taking notes. This means if you are struck by some ideas while someone is speaking, you can pour your thoughts into your notes. They don’t have to be perfect – just a place to capture things so your mind can refocus on listening.

If you do get caught up in your thoughts, it’s ok. Don’t dwell on it, and move on; keep listening. Your notes will help you remember all the points that you wanted to speak about when it’s your turn to talk, this way you can:

• Repeat something back to make sure you understood their message in the way they wanted.
• Acknowledge something you learned, or that resonated with you to develop a connection. 
• Use your notes as a reference point when you meet the person again. Try to acknowledge ideas/notions that were relevant to the other person or reiterate their stories.

Check-ins

Doing a check-in before people arrive to a meeting allows everyone to talk about what we are expecting from the session or share what we need to leave aside in order to be fully present in the meeting. For example, “I just had an incident and I’m still worried about the implications, but I’m looking forward to our discussion today so I’ll leave my thoughts about the incident aside to be able to contribute and learn in this meeting.”

There’s something liberating about these phrases because they signify a commitment to yourself and your team too. 

Set a purpose

Even if you don’t or can’t do formal check-ins, try to remind yourself of your purpose in the conversation. If you set an intention to learn something new, curiosity will spark, and you’ll be more open to new ideas. 

Movement

Five minutes before your meeting, take a moment to grab some water, stretch a bit, or put in the laundry! Let your body move and allow yourself to transition out from previous tasks or meetings. 

There’s plenty of research about how even light physical movement can help cognitive function. You can even make an agreement with your team about this.

Reduce distractions

If you work remotely and you are prone to get distracted, set yourself up for success by turning off distractions. Close Slack, your developer tools, or anything that can make your mind stroll.

Feedback

If you are comfortable with the idea, ask people for feedback on your listening style. 

Silence

So scary, and yet, so needed. Silence can be very uncomfortable, but if we overcome the discomfort we allow ourselves the space to reflect and really absorb what we are listening to. 

It might be helpful to be up-front about it and tell people you plan to leave discussion gaps to allow everyone to think and process. If we are intentional about silence and clear that it is encouraged, we might help people feel less like they need to fill them. 

One trick I recently applied during a retro was asking a question and requesting the team to wait five seconds before answering. These types of exercises might help your team get used to and be comfortable with silence. 

Observing

Listening is also observing. Try to pay attention to the other person, their expressions, their pace and tone, and the type of language they use. This can help you see the subtle messages and emotions left unsaid. 

Start training yourself by paying attention and perhaps taking notes. Once you feel more confident in identifying these more subtle messages, then you can start reflectively listening by repeating back what the other person has said, asking questions to gain clarity, and summarizing the information you heard. 

Observations are especially helpful at the deeper levels of reflective listening, where you try to dissect the meaning of the whole message by reflecting on the emotions you are noticing, your interpretation of the values involved in what you are hearing, and helping the speaker connect all these points. The idea of this type of exercise is to help the speaker feel seen and perhaps uncover aspects they didn’t notice or fully understand themselves.

If you want to learn more about reflective listening, I recommend the book Ask Powerful Questions by Will Wise and Chad Littlefield, specifically the Listening chapter. 

How to listen during a conflict

Listening during conflict or when we are receiving constructive feedback can be difficult. In these situations, it is even more important to check your self-awareness and biases. 

Once you have those two first things reviewed, remember that the point of difficult conversations is to seek to discover the truth, not to be right.

Set a purpose to understand the other perspective; this will help you be more open to asking questions instead of wanting to win an argument. 

If things get heated, and you find it hard to maintain curiosity about the other person’s perspective, take a step back, say you are taking it with you to reflect, and end the conversation. Be sure to mean this – don’t use it as a shortcut to avoid conflict, follow up on what you reflected, and try to re-initiate the conversation at a later point.

Final thoughts

Listening can be hard, and we have to embrace the fact that it will not always be perfect. However, like any other skill, if we dedicate time and intention to nurture it, we can improve. 

The good news is that there’s so much opportunity to practice it. From work to your personal life, retros, interviews, 1:1s, or dinner with your family are all great testing grounds.