
How to Be a Better Listener
Build stronger relationships and get more out of life by actually listening to what others have to say.
In the age of social media, everyone is an expert.
Yet despite all of this “expertise,” there’s a lot of disagreement these days. In fact, 86% of Americans believe the U.S. is more divided today than it’s been for quite some time.
Many obvious arguments can be made as to why this is.
For the purposes of this piece, let’s focus on one of them: Nobody truly listens to what anyone else has to say anymore.
Think you’re a good listener? Think again.
Unsurprisingly, most people think they are good listeners.
They’re wrong.
For starters, we all spend nearly half of our waking hours not paying attention to the world around us. So right off the bat, half of the words you’re supposed to hear go in one ear and out the other.
But it’s even worse than that.
We are tragically awful listeners. The average person only remembers 17%–25% of the things they hear.
Despite our remarkably embarrassing attention spans brought on by the proliferation of technology, this isn’t a new phenomenon.
A 1957 Harvard Business Review article explains the science behind why we don’t listen well:
Basically, the problem is caused by the fact that we think much faster than we talk. The average rate of speech for most Americans is around 125 words per minute. This rate is slow going for the human brain, which is made up of more than 13 billion cells and operates in such a complicated but efficient manner that it makes the great, modern digital computers seem slow-witted. People who study the brain are not in complete agreement on how it functions when we think, but most psychologists believe that the basic medium of thought is language. Certainly words play a large part in our thinking processes, and the words race through our brains at speeds much higher than 125 words per minute. This means that, when we listen, we ask our brain to receive words at an extremely slow pace compared with its capabilities.
Get this: Our listening skills are perhaps at their worst during conflicts.
Instead of listening to what others say when it’s their turn to talk, we turn our thoughts inwardly and think about how we’ll respond — which essentially makes constructive communication impossible.
This is bad news.

Poor communication — and poor listening in particular — is the source of many of the biggest problems we face in life:
- Romantic couples are most likely to split up because of communication problems.
- The average large enterprise loses $62.4 million each year due to poor communication; smaller businesses lose an average of $420,000.
- Bad communication is one of the main reasons friendships end.
If you want better relationships and a more fulfilling career, it’s time to sharpen your listening skills.
How can you spot a bad listener? They have several tells.
Bad listeners frequently interrupt.
They also shut down conversations because they’ve already made up their minds.
They are known to not pay attention. (A few years back, a former colleague actually made a phone call when I was telling him a story!)
They always one-up other people, turning every conversation into something about themselves. Conversations become competitions.
We’ve all experienced these tells when we’ve tried to say something.
And we’ve all been guilty of these behaviors ourselves—at least every now and again.
The different types of listening
To understand how to evolve from a bad listener into a good one, we first need to know the differences between the different kinds of listening.
In his classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey describes the five most common types of listening — which fall under his fifth habit, “seek first to understand, then be understood”:
- Ignoring, or simply not paying attention to what someone else has to say.
- Pretending, or nodding in agreement or acting as though you’re following along when you’re not actually listening.
- Selective listening, or focusing on the bits and pieces of a conversation that you want to hear.
- Attentive listening, or paying attention to what someone’s saying but on a somewhat superficial level.
- Empathetic listening, or actually trying to understand the precise ideas and emotions a speaker is trying to convey.
According to Covey — and it doesn’t require much thought to know he’s right — we tend to vacillate between the first four types of listening when we should always be empathetic listeners, assuming we wish to get the most out of each conversation.
Listening tricks
The good news is that if your listening skills leave much to be desired, you’re not completely out of hope. If you’re committed to becoming a better listener, you have the power to change your behavior.
First things first: Practice mindfulness to increase your awareness of the present moment.
In turn, this improves your memory and sharpens your focus — which gives you the cognitive flexibility needed to become a gifted conversationalist.
With more control over how you respond to the present moment, it’s easier to turn the following four tactics into ingrained behaviors.
1. Stop focusing on what you’ll say next
When someone’s talking to you and you’re thinking about how to respond to them, you are simply not able to fully process what that individual is saying.
The entire substance of a conversation might shift toward the end of someone’s remarks, for example. So you need to resist the temptation to from your own conclusions before they’re done talking.
If you’re not paying attention to what someone is saying because you are thinking about your own witty retort, it’s much more difficult — if not impossible — to truly understand another’s perspective.
You’re just focused on your own ideas.
Hal Gregersen, executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, puts this idea into perspective:
When I’m the most important thing in the world, that’s the moment when I’m most likely to be thinking about next thing I’m going to say instead of listening to you. At the very core, that’s what going on; I’m declaring to the world I am more important than you. That’s an uncomfortable moment of self-awareness, and a self-serving way of approaching life.
There’s an easy fix: Disable your internal monologue when someone else is speaking.
It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Pay attention to what the other person is saying. Listen to the words that come out of their mouth. When it’s your turn to speak, summarize their ideas before responding. That way, you can be sure you understood them correctly.
Not only will this approach give you a better grasp of what someone else is actually trying to convey, it will also reduce misunderstandings — setting the table for more productive conversations.
2. Be curious and ask questions
If you want to be a better listener, you need to genuinely be interested in what other people have to say.
An easy way to show your curiosity is by asking substantive questions.
In addition to increasing the chances you truly understand someone else’s ideas, asking questions:
- Builds trusting relationships
- Improves critical thinking skills
- Enhances memory
- Encourages others to ask questions
- Informs better decisions
The best listeners ask open-ended questions that give their conversation partners more room to respond.

3. Let the other person finish speaking before chiming in
People interrupt each other for a variety of reasons.
Maybe they want to show the speaker that they agree with their ideas or empathize with their plight.
Maybe they are rude and impatient and can’t wait to get their own points across.
Maybe they’re angry. Maybe they’re conversational bullies.
Or maybe they’re geniuses whose minds move miles a minute.
Whatever the case may be, most people don’t take too kindly to being interrupted.
Some of us get irritated or frustrated. Others can’t concentrate. Some lose their trains of thought completely.
Become a better listener by letting other people finish sharing their ideas and opinions before you chime in.
Otherwise, you’ll come across as a narcissist. It’s not a good look.
4. Speak less
If you’re like most people, you probably talk a lot more than you think you do.
Become a better listener by using the Pareto principle (i.e., the 80/20 rule) to guide how much listening and talking you do in each conversation.
Communications experts suggest that the best listeners keep their ears open 80% of the time and speak 20% of the time.
It might be challenging at first — particularly for chatterboxes. But if you master this skill, you won’t regret it.
Quieter people tend to be more intelligent than their loudmouthed counterparts.
Speak less, and you won’t have to worry about saying something dumb or revealing too much. You’ll also learn a lot of new things and show the people you converse with that you’re actually interested in what they have to say — which can help you develop stronger bonds with them.
“Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak,” writes Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. “You never know what you might learn from simply listening to the people around you.”
Being a great listener is hard work. Remember, most all of us are terrible listeners — despite our best intentions.
But if you want to understand different perspectives and connect with others on deeper levels, it’s worth learning how to listen and putting those behaviors into practice.
The first step to becoming a better listener is understanding that you can take proactive steps to improve your listening skills. You just need to be willing to try and determined to succeed.
Sharpening your listening skills doesn’t cost a penny. And really, there’s nothing to lose.
Do your best to consciously practice empathetic listening by asking genuine questions and speaking less frequently.
The better listener you become, the more successful you’re likely to be in your interpersonal relationships and your career.
Now how does that sound?
