SELF IMPROVEMENT

One of the best qualities you can develop is the ability to be a good listener. Linda Blair offers some tips

Here’s how you can improve your listening skills.

Being a good listener is both a skill and an art. You need to know how language works and what words mean - that’s the skill. But you also need to know the intention - that’s the art. Perhaps this distinction is what Meghan Markle implied when she asked for help to deal with suicidal thoughts - she knew she was heard, but didn’t feel understood.

Listening comes naturally to babies and young children, who use vast amounts of their cognitive capacity to learn their native language so they can communicate effectively and respond appropriately.

Once that’s accomplished, we become capable of thinking faster than we talk. As Ralph Nichols, then at the University of Minnesota, wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “we can listen and still have some spare time for thinking. The use, or misuse, of this spare thinking time holds the answer to how well a person can concentrate on the spoken word.”

According to the National Centre for Voice and Speech at the University of Utah, the average conversation rate for English speakers is about 125-150 words/minute. Martin Tovee at Newcastle University estimates the speed of response of brain neurons is 0.2-0.3 seconds to mediate perception; 0.5 to 1 seconds to encode information. This implies we think about four times faster than we speak - which leaves a lot of spare thinking time when we’re engaged in conversation.

What can you do to boost your listening skills?

Observe as well as listen. Chris Cuomo, broadcaster on CNN News, stresses the need to watch the speaker, to attend to qualities of speech as well as hearing what’s spoken. A speaker’s words often convey one thing, while body language and tone or pitch of speech suggests another. Careful observation is needed to understand true intentions.

Use your processing powers wisely.

Use some of your “extra” processing time to notice your biases, preconceived ideas and emotional reactions, so they don’t inadvertently cloud what you can learn from the speaker. Stop yourself, too, whenever you’re about to interrupt the speaker, or are starting to plan your reply, instead of listening fully.

Study music. Claude Alain and colleagues at the University of Toronto found musical training, particularly classical training, creates long-lasting improvements in both cochlea function and central auditory processes - improvements that might even, they suggest, delay declines in auditory perception as we age.

Play with sound. Communications expert Julian Treasure recommends we sharpen our powers of attention by practising specific focus. Try, for example, to identify discrete sounds when in a noisy environment. Or choose one sound, focus on it and describe it to yourself - a robin’s song or flowing water, for example.

Enjoy contrast. Set aside three minutes every day to immerse yourself in silence. After all, one of the most powerful ways to understand something is to know what it’s like to be without it.