"Speaking is a need, listening is an art," such is the statement of the German novelist Goethe. Indeed, we can hardly avoid speaking since we live in a society of relationships. In the professional sphere, personal sphere, and everyday life alike, we feel the need to express out loud an opinion, a piece of information, a request, a recommendation, advice, a sharing of ideas, etc. Speaking therefore seems necessary to us.

From a very young age, importance is given as much to speaking as to listening: children are taught to pronounce letters, combine syllables, read texts, but also to listen in order to memorize, be guided, obey, and understand. In adulthood, the balance becomes less stable and we spend more time working on our language than on our listening ability. It is as if listening were an innate faculty that, once developed in childhood, no longer needed to be worked on. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that listening is not a natural skill or one acquired forever, but rather a habit to learn (and practice), especially when one wants to develop active listening.

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What influences our listening?

6 key factors according to Jakobson’s communication model

To better understand the factors that influence our listening, we can rely on Jakobson’s communication model. This linguist explains that 6 factors are involved in an interaction:

• The sender (or addresser): This is the interlocutor who will deliver the message. They may deliver their message to one person, to a specific group of people, or to a broader set of people they know less well.

• The receiver (or addressee): This is the person to whom the message is addressed. They may be alone in receiving this information or accompanied by several people.

• The message: This is the information transmitted by the sender to the receiver; in other words, it is the subject of the conversation. Are you talking about the latest movie seen at the cinema? About the previous year’s financial report?

• The context of the situation (or referent): This is the situation in which the message takes place. Is it a lunch between colleagues? A brunch with friends? A family dinner?

• The communication channel: The channel can, first of all, refer to the physical place in which the message is delivered, as well as the way the sender and receiver interact. Depending on the place of exchange, the conversation can be greatly influenced. Indeed, whether it is a public or private space, a noisy or quiet space, a space with many people nearby or very few, the conversation can be completely different! Furthermore, the channel can refer to the communication medium used: in person, physically, by phone, by email, by postal mail, by message, by video, etc.

• The code: The language must be understandable by both parties; they must understand each other (speak the same language, share the same vocabulary, etc.).

3 factors to complement Jakobson’s theory

If we are telling you about these 6 factors, it is because all of them will guide your listening ability. Let’s imagine that the sender is not convinced by what they are saying and speaks in a monotone way: you will be less inclined to listen. Another example: imagine you are listening to an online webinar; your listening will be reduced due to surrounding distractions in the listening environment.

In addition to the 6 factors described by Jakobson, we can add extra elements:

• Emotions: How the sender and receiver feel at the present moment of the exchange (tired, irritated, sad, in a hurry, stressed, etc.) will impact listening quality. Listening conditions may be perfectly met, but if you have just learned news that upset you, you will not be able to listen optimally.

• Hierarchical position: Depending on each party’s hierarchical position (manager/employee, parent/child, doctor/patient, etc.), the sender and receiver will adopt a different posture. The patient will carefully listen to their doctor’s recommendations. A well-behaved child will listen to their parents and follow their advice. A good manager will listen to their team member’s impressions in order to think of solutions suited to them.

• Experience: Depending on past events, repetition of situations, and listening lessons each person has drawn, the receiver will not listen in the same way. If they hear your remarks for the Xth time, they will listen less attentively than if it is a first time.

Considerable assets: reasons to work on your listening

Adopting active listening is valuable because it brings considerable benefits:

• Avoiding conflict: When someone expresses disagreement or reproaches you, your weapon is listening!! This weapon, whose strength should not be underestimated, will allow you to stay calm, set aside your own situation to put yourself in the sender’s shoes (thus showing empathy), and above all help you avoid a possible conflict. Without listening, you may get carried away, respond aggressively, and ultimately fail to resolve the conflict—or even worsen it. Of course, conflict resolution does not rest only on the message recipient’s shoulders; the sender also has a role to play. That is why, when someone wishes to express disagreement, at SEVEN we favor the DESC method (link to the article on the DESC method), which places the recipient in good listening conditions.

• Creating bonds: Listening also has this wonderful power to strengthen relationships. Take your friendships as an example: you appreciate your friends because they know how to listen when needed, and you view their listening as signs of trust and interest. Also consider group projects: the more listened to you feel, the more comfortable you feel within a team. Another example is salespeople who carefully listen to prospects in the smallest details to make proper use of the information shared with them.

• Stimulating curiosity: By listening attentively, being open to discovering learning, and adopting a mindset of broadening your learning fields, you will inevitably stimulate your curiosity and, consequently, learn a great deal. Training courses, for example, are a good situation where your listening and curiosity are linked. Of course, this is not to say that listening does everything in learning, but by combining listening with action phases, you will make the most of this soft skill.

However, for listening to reveal its considerable benefits, it is important that you—or the person listening to you—practice what is called active listening, as theorized by American psychologist Carl Rogers. How does he define this listening? The message receiver uses paraphrasing and questioning to ensure that the message delivered by the sender has been understood. On the one hand, this allows the sender to know they have indeed been listened to and that their topic is of interest. On the other hand, it invites dialogue, deepens the message topic, and encourages both sender and receiver to reflect more deeply and lead the discussion toward a completely new topic.

To deepen your listening learning, we invite you to consult the description of our Knowing How to Listen training course, which explains everything we can provide.

Some good practices for developing active listening

Learning to ask the (right) questions to show your genuine interest

Imagine you are in a listening posture but do not interact, ask no questions, and show no emotion on your face: you are in fact adopting an impassive listening style, which is highly unsettling for your interlocutor, who does not really know whether you are listening. By asking questions (the right questions, that is), this will be a sign of your genuine listening and interest.

However, it is not about asking a few questions to prove your active listening, but about asking the right questions. Due to their function and objectives, professions such as lawyers, journalists, doctors, or investigators are particularly led to ask constructive questions. Thanks to their studies and past experiences, they have developed this inclination to find the right questions and have understood that the choice of these can clear up many mysteries! Yet in more conventional roles, asking questions is not seen as a routine activity and is not easy. Why? Because they have not developed the habit of working on their listening.

And what if, in business, you learned to ask yourselves the right questions—those that will stimulate the bubbling of ideas, trust between colleagues, and empathy. Can we ask every question? Maybe not! You should instead select questions that show your active listening. Prefer open-ended questions and those that rephrase what the user said. Also keep in mind that each question will influence the next ones and the conversation in general.

Alison Wood Brooks’s research highlighted four types of questions: introductory questions (e.g., how are you?), mirror questions (e.g., I’m fine, and you?), switch questions (those that completely change the subject), and follow-up questions (those that ask for more information). Note that it is this last category of questions that will encourage exchange and allow you to develop active listening.

In How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Dale Carnegie explains that one major issue remains the lack of questions. Consequently, possible solutions are to ask questions that the interlocutor will enjoy answering. Take the example of a recruitment interview where both the candidate and recruiter say at the end, “I wish they had asked me more questions.” Both wanted to talk about topics they liked and now regret that the other party did not show interest in them. Thus, this absence of questions is a missed opportunity to initiate an interpersonal connection.

Taking care of vocal and visual communication to avoid unsuccessful listening

Even if you do not speak (or speak little), when you listen, you communicate just as much. Albert Mehrabian explains through his three V rule that our verbal communication has 7% impact on others, our vocal communication 38%, and our non-verbal communication, therefore visual, 55%. Note that these indicators should not be taken as absolute postulates, but they demonstrate an interesting fact: our non-verbal communication (visual and vocal communication) has more effect on others than our verbal communication does. Thus, the listening style we adopt sends several signals to the interlocutor.

To learn more about Mehrabian’s three V theory, note that we organize a training course on the subject, titled Communicating with Non-Verbal.

Before going further, let us clarify what is meant by vocal and visual communication. Vocal refers to voice intonation, volume, tone, rhythm, and silences. Visual, meanwhile, refers to facial expressions, gestures, gaze, smile, and proxemics. It only takes the interlocutor you are speaking to choosing a harsh tone, a loud and hurried voice, a piercing gaze, a lack of smile, closed fists, for you to immediately feel less comfortable, even attacked. We then say your interlocutor is using aggressive listening. The solution for you, as the message sender, is to avoid conflict and establish dialogue. Changing location, communication channel, and postponing your meeting to another time can be solutions to prevent your interlocutor’s aggressive listening from recurring.

Let us take the opposite situation where your interlocutor is grinning from ear to ear, laughs at all your jokes (even though they are not all hilarious), agrees with every word you say, responds cheerfully, and looks at you insistently. In this situation, you feel more at ease than in the previous example but somewhat unsettled because you do not know whether your interlocutor is truly sincere or blinded by the interest they have in you. We then say your interlocutor is showing flattering or romantic listening. Your solution is to ask questions that force them to share their opinion.

Alternating roles to promote active listening from both parties

Listening must work both ways. If you are in an active listening posture, it is preferable that roles reverse in order to avoid creating an unbalanced relationship. It is true that in some situations this speaking imbalance may be justified by each person’s hierarchical role. Thus, it will seem normal for a teacher to speak more than students, or for a manager to speak more than collaborators during a team meeting. But if you are speaking to a peer such as a friend, coworker, family member, or a stranger met in the street, the fairest situation is to alternate speaking time so that no one feels frustrated.

If as soon as you start speaking, you notice that your interlocutor constantly interrupts you, brings the conversation back to themselves, and ultimately lets you speak very little, we say your interlocutor adopts egocentric listening. Instead of seeing this listening as negative, you can adopt another view and detect in it a way for you to gather valuable information about your interlocutor (their children’s names, activities practiced, lifestyle habits, etc.). In other words, an egocentric person will give you openings to develop a stronger personal relationship. To do this, we advise you to let your interlocutor speak and therefore move from message sender status to receiver status. Then invite your interlocutor to continue the exchange at another time so that this time speech is rebalanced and roles are changed.

Another imbalance situation that can be observed is when the message receiver is absorbed in another action and does not look you (or hardly at all) in the eyes. They seem to listen to you but are doing something else at the same time (e.g., they say they are listening while being on their phone). They are, so to speak, distracted, hence the use of the expression “distracted listening.” Moreover, their distracted listening may appear differently: they look at you, are physically present in front of you, but their mind is elsewhere. Their gaze may possibly betray them. What should you do? Show empathy for your interlocutor! Maybe they have good reasons to be distracted? Let them focus on the task that concerns them, which may allow them to be more operational and focused when they come back to you.