What are the types of listening?

Hearing and listening are not the same. You hear music, the sound of rainfall, or the sound of food being prepared in the kitchen. Listening, on the other hand, requires attention, comprehension of the message that’s being relayed, and recollection of what’s been said.

Benefits of Being a Good Listener

There are numerous benefits associated with being a good listener. People with refined listening skills can help others feel secure in expressing their opinions. They may also be better able to reduce tension during arguments and communicate respect to the speaker. Other potential benefits include being more likable, building stronger relationships, and having a clearer understanding of what’s being discussed.

• Good listeners are more likable. Individuals with strong listening skills are present in the conversation. People who listen with focus are often perceived as more likable.
• Good listeners build stronger relationships. Communication is not a one-way street. Good listeners show interest, ask open-ended questions, and acknowledge what’s being said. This helps reduce misunderstandings and builds stronger relationships.
• Good listeners have a clearer understanding of the topics being discussed. Individuals with refined listening skills seek to fully understand a speaker’s message. They pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal cues and ask for clarification when needed.

Strategies for Effective Listening

Listening isn’t a passive activity, but a process that you actively undertake. To be a better listener, you must be focused on the speaker, their message, and let the speaker know you understand what’s been said. Below are just a few of the techniques you can use to become a better listener.

• Make eye contact. Making and maintaining eye contact with the speaker lets them know they have your undivided attention. Put your phone on silent and put it away, and turn off your radio and TV. If you’re in a Zoom meeting, set your status to “do not disturb” and minimize other browser windows. Looking at your smartphone or scanning the room can make you seem uninterested and interrupt your ability to concentrate on what you are hearing.
• Ask follow-up questions. If the speaker’s message is unclear, ask clarifying questions to gain more information. You can also ask confirming questions, such as “I want to make sure I got that right. It sounds like you’re saying Is that correct?” This can help you gauge if you’ve received the message accurately. If you’re engaged with a teacher, colleague, or manager, take notes and leave room for silence. This allows you to take a beat and process the information you’ve received before asking for more information.
• Be present and attentive. Good listeners are attentive and engaged in the moment. They shut out distractions and give their undivided attention to the speaker. Additionally, using positive minimal response, such as nodding, touch, or through sound, also shows you’re listening and actively engaged with the speaker.
• Don’t interrupt. When you interrupt, it communicates that you don’t care about what’s being said. Interrupting can also make it appear as if you’re uninterested in the subject matter and were looking for a moment to interject.

Examples of Ineffective Listening

Ineffective listeners aren’t engaged, don’t make eye contact, and often miss what’s being presented. Ineffective listening strategies you should avoid include selective listening, inattentiveness, and defensive listening.

• Selective listening. Selective listening is like listening with a highlighter. Instead of considering the totality of the speaker’s message, selective listeners only pay attention to the parts they think are most relevant to them.
• Inattentive listeners don’t give speakers their full attention. They’re often distracted and focused on other things, which can mean missing most of what the speaker is saying.
• Defensive listening. Defensive listeners hear innocent statements, such as “I don’t like people who are indecisive,” and perceive them as personal attacks. Defensive listening can cause strain in both personal and professional relationships.

4 Types of Listening

Listening skills can be developed, but it takes practice. Whether you’re interested in improving your networking, landing a new client, or connecting better with your family, strong listening skills can help. Below are just a few effective listening styles.

1. Deep Listening

Deep listening occurs when you’re committed to understanding the speaker’s perspective. It involves paying attention to both verbal and nonverbal cues, such as the words being used, the speaker’s body language, and their tone. This type of listening helps build trust and rapport, and it helps others feel comfortable in expressing their thoughts and opinions.

2. Full Listening

Full listening involves paying close and careful attention to what the speaker is conveying. It often involves the use of active listening techniques, such as paraphrasing what’s been said to the person you’re speaking with to ensure you understand their messaging. Full listening is useful in the classroom, when someone is instructing you on how to complete a task, and when discussing work projects with superiors.

3. Critical Listening

Critical listening involves using systematic reasoning and careful thought to analyze a speaker’s message and separate fact from opinion. Critical listening is often useful in situations when speakers may have a certain agenda or goal, such as watching political debates, or when a salesperson is pitching a product or service.

4. Therapeutic Listening

Therapeutic listening means allowing a friend, colleague, or family member to discuss their problems. It involves emphasizing and applying supportive nonverbal cues, such as nodding and maintaining eye contact, in addition to empathizing with their experiences.

Become a Better Listener

Becoming a better listener takes practice, but if you succeed, you’ll find yourself learning new and interesting things about the people you communicate with. You may also find you’re better at picking up subtle messaging cues others may miss.

A number of specific strategies can be applied to listening, but they all share one key element: being present and attentive during conversations and respectful of those involved. This ability can help you be a more effective partner, parent, student, and coworker.

Recommended Reading

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Sources

The Balance Careers, “Types of Listening Skills with Examples”

Customer Service Institute of America, “8 Examples of Effective Listening”

Indeed, Building Communication Skills: 9 Types of Listening

Roger K. Allen, Deep Listening

Silver Delta, 5 Benefits of Being a Great Listener

ThoughtCo. The Definition of Listening and How to Do It Well

Very Well Mind, “How to Practice Active Listening”

Are you a good listener? Or perhaps here's a better question: What type of listener are you? That's right, there are multiple types of listening that you can do, with different situations calling for different approaches. Knowing how to be a good listener, and staying aware of what people in your life need, can help take your social relationships to the next level. When you utilize the proper form of listening given the circumstances, it allows your friends, family, and colleagues to feel seen and understood.

Many people are able to do this automatically, but it never hurts to have a little breakdown of what exactly the different forms of listening are and when you should employ them in your life.

Say you're sitting in a lecture or a work meeting, trying to parse through information as you're being told to create your own thoughts and embrace new ideas. This would be the perfect time for critical listening. "Critical listening is a reasonable and systematic process of evaluating and forming an opinion on what is being heard by analyzing the difference between fact and opinion," explains board-certified psychiatrist Roxanna Namavar, D.O. "It allows you to assess information in order to form opinions and create plans from what is being said to you."

Having the skill to work through information and building your own opinions is essential within your work but may even extend to your personal life if you're put in a sales situation. "Critical listening is also important when evaluating the claims of someone trying to persuade you of something or sell something to you. Critical thinking will allow you to see through the hype in order to discern your own opinion about what's being presented to you," notes licensed marriage and family therapist Tiana Leeds, M.A., LMFT.

So, how can you improve your critical listening skills? Namavar suggests starting with determining the difference between fact and opinion, recognizing bias within conversation, and allowing yourself to think outside the box. "Focus on logic, facts, and reason, and an old trick—write down what you hear," she notes. This method of listening is all about engaging your intellectual mind. 

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There is a time and a place for speaking in conversation, and there is also a time for staying quiet and absorbing what you're hearing. This is known as passive listening. "Passive listening is the process of listening to information, not reacting to it, and allowing the speaker to speak freely," explains Namavar. "Passive listening allows you to take in information without being encompassed by it or reacting—a way of preserving a personal boundary or attention."

If a friend needs to work through a personal problem or simply vent, this is a good opportunity to practice passive listening without interjecting your opinion or thoughts on the matter. "You can become a better passive listener by focusing on what is being said, letting go of personal beliefs or reactions, and accepting your role of listening and not speaking," she adds.

This form of listening is essential when it comes to creating strong relationships so your friends, partner, or family know that they are being heard and understood. "Everyone wants to hear themselves speak," she explains. 

This is similar to supportive listening, which is essential for allowing people to feel seen and can help to build interpersonal relationships. "With supportive listening, you're chiming in with statements that feel affirmative and validating of what the person is saying," explains Chloe Carmichael, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author. "But you're not speaking in a way that suggests you want to take the floor and interject. You're instead making periodic interjections or words of validation that are intended to encourage the person to keep sharing more."

Much like passive listening, empathetic listening is another example that can help to build strong bonds and allow people in your life to feel heard. However, this form requires you to ask questions that tap into what the person needs from the conversation and, as the name suggests, calls upon empathy. "Empathetic listening is the process of listening and asking meaningful questions that helps develop, enhance, and strengthen human relationships," says Namavar.

While hopefully you already feel empathy in your daily life, there are some ways that you can tap into and improve this listening form. "You can become a better empathetic listener by letting go of all judgment, providing your undivided attention to the person and what they are saying, being open to everything they are telling you (fact and opinion), trying to resonate with their feelings and experiences, becoming comfortable in silence, and following up with the other person to create a sense of support and connection," she recommends. 

That means, even if someone is telling you something you don't necessarily agree with, you approach the conversation with an open mind and allow yourself to embrace their feelings. It's also important in helping to avoid misunderstandings, by allowing you to see another point of view.

4. Informational listening

If you've just started a new job and are looking to absorb a swath of info, as the name suggests, informational listening is going to be your best way to do so. "During this type of listening, the listener concentrates on taking in and retaining new concepts," explains Leeds. "This requires a high level of cognitive engagement."

This form of listening will allow you to take in new information while sorting through the importance and cataloging it away for later. "The most suitable settings for informational listening are traditional and nontraditional classroom settings, listening to a nonfiction audiobook, attending a lecture or conference, or receiving training at a new job," Leeds adds. You can home in on informational listening by ensuring you're staying awake and alert, taking notes, and asking clarifying questions to pin down necessary information. 

Active listening is perhaps one of the most common forms of listening when you're having a conversation and wish to show the person you're talking to that you're engaged and alert. "Active listening is the process of listening that relies on the undivided attention of the listener with a conscious effort to listen and understand what is being said, along with retaining the information," says Namavar.

Improving your active listening skills is quite simple: Utilize body language to display your interest in the conversation, make an effort not to interrupt the person who is speaking, ask questions that are relevant and move the topic along, and stay focused on the conversation at hand. "Active listening is important in every part of life, but it is most applicable to managing problems/conflict and building communication skills with others by demonstrating interest and rapport through engaging in conversation," they add. 

Reflective listening (also called active listening) can be employed to defuse arguments and may seem similar to empathetic listening. "Reflective listening is where you're essentially, as the name implies, repeating back what somebody has said," explains Carmichael. "It can be very affirming for a person to feel heard," she adds. For example, if you're in an argument, instead of approaching the conversation with aggression, you can use this method of listening to defuse tension and show your conversation partner that you hear what they're saying. "In arguments a lot of time it's more like a competition to see who can make their point. If you step out of that with reflective listening, it can calm the other person," she explains.

This form of listening also displays understanding of what the other person is speaking about, which can lead to a more well-rounded conversation. "With reflective listening, you're really pausing in and checking in with them to see if you've fully understood what they've said before trying to move on to anything else. This can help to establish rapport and make them feel secure and calm, like they don't have to keep fighting to make their points or worry that they're competing with you for air time," says Carmichael.

This may be difficult if you're a naturally fiery person, but removing yourself from the idea of "winning" an argument and instead focusing on the other person's point of view will make it easier to relate. Who knows, reflecting their thoughts may even help you come around to their ideas or allow the other person to see that their argument doesn't necessarily check out.

Why being a good listener is important.

Being a good listener is undoubtedly important, and in fact, it's the easiest way to make people feel valued in your social and professional relationships. Good communication is the key to success when it comes to being around other people, and being a good listener creates a strong foundation for trust. "Listening is an important component of being a human—a unique way of perceiving and interacting with the world around us," note Namavar and Sakopoulo. "Though listening is typically thought of as hearing through your ears, there are many ways to listen through body language, perceiving, and energy. Don't underestimate the power of listening!"

Working on your listening skills will not only help to strengthen your relationships, but it can also allow you to be more nimble when picking up on new information and feel comfortable expressing empathy.

If you're not naturally a great listener or have a tendency of talking over other people, try to make an effort to ask more questions, offer fewer interjections, and really hear what your conversational partner is saying. It can make all the difference in building a strong base for relationships and will make people more inclined to listen when it's your turn to speak.