Understanding Active Listening and How to Practice It

Think about the last time you had a conversation where you felt truly, deeply heard. The other person wasn’t just waiting for their turn to talk. They weren’t scrolling on their phone or looking over your shoulder. They were fully present with you, and you could feel it. This powerful form of communication is called active listening. It is one of the most profound gifts you can give another person, and it is a skill that can transform the quality of your relationships.

At Televero Health, we teach active listening in therapy because it is the foundation of all healthy communication. It’s a skill that helps you to connect more deeply with your partner, your children, your friends, and your colleagues. It moves you beyond simply hearing words to truly understanding the meaning and feeling behind them.

Hearing vs. Listening

We often use the words “hearing” and “listening” interchangeably, but they are very different things. Hearing is a passive, physical process. It’s the act of sound waves hitting your eardrum. You can hear the TV in the background without paying any attention to it.

Listening, on the other hand, is an active, psychological process. It requires conscious effort, attention, and intention. Active listening is the practice of being fully engaged in what the other person is saying, with the primary goal of understanding them, not of forming your own response.

Most of us, most of the time, are not actively listening. We are engaged in what could be called “reply listening.” We are listening just enough to figure out what we want to say next. We are busy formulating our argument, our advice, or our own story in our head. This means we are missing a huge part of what the other person is actually trying to communicate.

The Three Core Skills of Active Listening

Active listening is a skill that you can learn and practice. It involves three key components.

1. Be Fully Present

You cannot be an active listener if you are distracted. This is the first and most important step. When you are in a conversation, make a conscious choice to be there completely.

• Put away distractions. Put your phone on silent and turn it face down. Turn off the TV.
• Use non-verbal cues. Turn your body to face the person. Make eye contact. Nod your head to show you are following along.
• Listen with your whole body. Pay attention not just to their words, but to their tone of voice, their facial expressions, and their body language. These often communicate more than the words themselves.

2. Listen to Understand, Not to Reply

This requires a mental shift. Your goal is to get inside the other person’s world, not to impose your own. This means you have to quiet your own internal monologue.

• Be curious. Approach the conversation with a genuine desire to understand their perspective, even if you don’t agree with it.
• Don’t interrupt. Let them finish their thought completely before you speak.
• Ask open-ended questions. These are questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” They encourage the other person to elaborate. For example, instead of “Are you sad?” you could ask, “How are you feeling about that?”

3. Reflect and Validate

This is the step that shows the other person that you have truly heard them. It involves reflecting back what you heard to make sure you understood correctly and validating their feelings.

• Paraphrase. In your own words, summarize what you just heard. You can start with phrases like, “So, what I’m hearing you say is…” or “It sounds like you’re feeling…” This gives them a chance to correct any misunderstandings.
• Validate their emotions. Validation does not mean you agree with them; it simply means you acknowledge that their feelings are real and make sense from their perspective. You can say things like, “That sounds incredibly frustrating,” or “I can see why you would be so hurt by that.”

Active listening is a practice. It takes effort and intention, especially at first. But by practicing these skills, you can transform your conversations from a series of competing monologues into a true dialogue of connection and understanding.

Key Takeaways

• Active listening is a skill that involves being fully present and engaged in a conversation with the primary goal of understanding the other person.
• It is different from passive hearing or “reply listening,” where you are just waiting for your turn to speak.
• The core skills of active listening are being fully present, listening to understand (not to reply), and reflecting back what you heard to validate the other person’s feelings.
• Practicing active listening can dramatically improve the quality and depth of your relationships.

Ready to take the first step? We can help. Get started with Televero Health today.