How to Improve Active Listening Skills (Your Secret Weapon to Listen Better)

How to improve your active listening skills, right? In this video, I want to share with you your secrets, your best secrets that you can leverage to listen better. Now, often on my YouTube channel, I release videos on speaking, on communication. And once in a while, I receive questions like this, like the one below on what can I do to improve my listening skills? What can I do in order to understand what I have been told? What can I do in order to improve my listening to the point where I can also improve, improve my comprehension? Now, quite often I get answers like this. So in this video, I want to share with you my strategies, my best strategies on how you can improve your active listening so that whenever you are in a meeting with other people, whenever you are at a conference, or maybe you're in a small group or one-on-one that you can be actively listening and comprehending everything that you hear in that conversation. So walk with me and let's go. Now I'm speaking to you today on the peak of the Whistler Mountain. This is in beautiful British Columbia. You can see the slopes behind me. And this is a beautiful and a typical Canadian summer, right? I am wearing a light jacket. It's a little bit windy up here and it is feeling a little cool with the wind. So this is a beautiful Canadian summer. So I'm happy to be sharing with you my best strategies from on top of Whistler Mountain, right? So when it comes to improving your active listening, right? There's two things going on here. There is the hearing part of listening and there's the actual listening and comprehension part, right? And I want to make this distinction because whenever you want to improve a skillset, right? There's a distinction you need to make a deeper understanding of something so that you can improve the thing you want to improve. So the first thing I want to share with you is what is this distinction between hearing what is being said and between listening to and comprehending what was just said. The whole principle is that listening involves more than just hearing, right? Hearing is the physiological process of detecting the sounds in our environment, right? It means that you have the outer ear, which is what you see the outer ear, which you know, the visible part of it, the outer ear is what captures the sound, right? And then the sound goes into the inner ear, the middle ear first, and the middle ear is what translates that sound into vibrations, into vibrational frequencies. And then the sound travels further into the inner ear, which is inside of your ear. And that is now how this vibrational sound gets translated into our nerves, the nerve impulses. And as you guessed, the nerve impulse goes from the middle ear, inner ear, all the way into the brain, the auditory canal, so that then auditory nerves, so that our brain interprets the vibrational frequencies into meaningful noise into meaningful sound. So you can appreciate that is the process of hearing. It is physiological process that involves our certain, our anatomical features from our outer ear, inner ear, middle ear, all the way to the brain. So that is hearing, which is very different from listening, right? Whereas hearing was the physiological process. Listening is a mental process. And this is an entirely different thing. What you're really asking when you say, how do I prove my listening skills? What you're really asking for is the mental process of listening. Listening is the mental process of making meaning from the sounds that we hear. Because let's face it, if we are just hearing things, they are sounds, we have to make meaning out of the sounds we hear. What do the sounds mean? What is the understanding we can extrapolate from that? You know, what are the meanings associated from what we are hearing? So if you are asking the question of how do I improve my listening skills? How do I comprehend what is being said to me? How do I remember what was said to me? How do I develop a deeper understanding of what I just heard? Then there are two reasons, two main reasons why you may be experiencing the breakdowns when it comes to listening. I'm going to call it a breakdown, but a breakdown may be different for you. Maybe you are listening to this and you're thinking that for some reason, you just can't retain what was being told to you. Or maybe you have difficulties in terms of truly comprehending the insights or the meaning behind what was being said. Either way, there are two causes if you are challenged, if you face a challenge associated with listening and you want to improve your listening skills. There's two reasons why there could be those breakdowns. The first reason is focus. And the second reason is filter, right? So I want to talk about filter first. When it comes to filters, right? We have numerous filters that stand in the way of us having the comprehension and the understanding that we desire. There are many filters that we aren't even aware of. They happen at the subconscious level that prevent us from being able to listen actively, that prevent us from being able to comprehend at a deep level what was just said. So let's talk about filters. When it comes to filters, right? There are five subconscious filters that could be happening that are standing in the way of you having the listening skills that you desire. The first filter is values, right? Our values guide our actions. Our values dictate how we want to behave, right? The way that we want to operate, the way we want to be, the way we want to live, our values guide those things. So oftentimes when we're listening, we're listening through the filter of our own values. And especially when we're in a room of different people, you have different values. If you're in a room of, if you're talking one-on-one with someone, that other person you're speaking with is also speaking from the lens of their own values. If you are in a corporate nine to five, you're in a meeting or you are in a team meeting, right? Even if it is a work setting, right? There are values, there's individual values, there's also the group values. So this is where you need to have a level of awareness, right? If you want to listen better, if you want to increase your listening skills, how are your values standing in the way? So that's number one is values filter. The second filter is culture, right? The definition of culture is really the observed behavior of a group, right? It is observable and it is measurable, right? So that is culture. The culture dictates a group's way of being, right? The way that they are. So that is the culture. There is both, just like in value, there is both an individual culture and there is the group culture. So sometimes again, just like in the values, when you are communicating to a group, when you're in a group, there's both individual culture, there is group culture as well. But whenever you are communicating, when you receive things, when you communicate things, it's through the lens of your own culture. And sometimes that stands in the way of our listening. So that's the second filter is culture. The third filter is language. Language, right? Language sometimes depending on the language that you are speaking, if English was not your first language, for example, and you're in a environment where it is predominantly English or native English speakers, then that is more black and white in terms of sometimes our language prevents us from being able to understand or comprehend. However, most of the times it has nothing to do with English being your first language or second language or your third language. It has nothing to do with that. It is more to do with a shared language, right? And shared language has an understanding behind it. There could be, for example, it could be an industry specific language. It could be a language associated with that team, with the background information or the length of time they were together. You formulate a shared language. So language is a very key filter. Oftentimes when we feel we're not listening better, we feel it's because of our English ability sometimes. And most of the time it has nothing to do with your English ability. It is more to do with the filters associated with not comprehending the shared language, right? So that is the third filter is language. The fourth filter is attitude, right? Attitude. What is your attitude towards what was being said, right? Do you take it personally, for example, or do you agree with it, for example, or do you feel like you just don't align with it? Like what is the attitude of your attitude towards what was being said? And our attitudes act as filters towards our ability to understand it at face value and especially our ability to understand it at the deepest level that was intended, right? So where are you at in terms of your attitudes as you are communicating with the key individuals in your life or in the workplace? What are your attitudes? Be aware of that because sometimes again, all of these filters I'm sharing with you are subconscious. We're not even aware of them playing, of how they play out in our active listening skills. And the fifth filter is intention, right? Intention. What is intention? Intention is what is the outcome you want to achieve as a result of this communication? What's the outcome? What are the goals, right? What is the mission, the values associated with it? And so when you are setting an intention, it means your attention is towards that outcome. Your attention is there because where attention goes, your intention will always follow, right? So oftentimes we start communications and we start meetings with other people and we don't take the time to set our intentions or the group's intention behind it. And that is also with that lack of intention or differing intentions that creates the filter that prevents us from being able to listen actively or to improve our listening skills. So those are the five filters and I want to hear from you. Comment below. Which filter do you see coming into play when it comes to your comprehension and understanding? Which filter do you think is the most important for you right now? I want to hear from you. Comment below. So I just got done sharing with you all the different filters that could be standing in the way, right? Filters was the first cause. The second cause, what is it? The second cause is focus, right? And by the way, focus is what creates attention and where attention is, your intention follows. So all of these things are not independent of each other. They play hand in hand, right? So it is really your wisdom and understanding of having that self-awareness that will take your listening and your communications to the next level. So if you are serious, if you're serious and you are listening to this right now and you are identifying, okay, there are a lot of things at play that I wasn't even aware of. And if you are serious, you're the kind of person who wants to take your listening to the next level so that you can communicate better, so you can step up into your leadership. If you're serious about creating that for your career path and you don't want to figure it out on your own and let's say you want somebody to guide you, to give you true feedback on your situation and show you where to focus on exactly what you can do in your individual situation. If you want that coaching, then I invite you to apply. The link is below this video. It is an application for my coaching program. It is an executive coaching program. So if you are listening to this right now and you're at the beginning stage of your career or you're a student and you are still in college about to graduate, then this is not for you, right? It's not for you if you're at the beginning of your career. This is for you if you are an established career professional in your industry and you want to take your leadership up to the next level. Then if that is you and you want that coaching to guide you on exactly where to improve for your particular situation, then I invite you to apply and I hope to see you on the inside. Okay, so now let's talk about focus, right? Filters, focus. What does focus mean? Let's face it, right now in the society, in the workplace as well, there is information everywhere. It's information overload. So many things are vying for our attention, pulling you in every which way, right? Emails we have to answer, text messages, phone calls, tasks as well, not to mention your duties at home with your family and your loved ones, right? And then you go out there, there's people trying to ask you to come in this direction, pull you in that direction. Hey, excuse me, can I have a few minutes of your time? And that is the entire day. So many things are pulling for our attention. It is no wonder why we don't have the focus we need to understand where our challenges lie. It is no wonder why nowadays we're not even interested in taking the time to develop our listening skills. We just want to know the sound bites, get to the point, tell me right away, right? Don't beat around the bush. And that's how conversation has become these days, even in the workforce. Have you noticed that is that nowadays the skillsets that's most important is how do you stop beating around the bush, get to the point because I don't have time, right? Have you noticed that in the workplace that that is so fundamental to be able to be able to communicate effectively like that, to get to the point, right? And because of that, the cost associated with that is that it has taken a toll on our listening skills as well, right? So focus plays a really key role in terms of why we are experiencing challenges in listening and understanding deeply. So the big question that you might be thinking as you are watching this is, well, how do I listen better then, right? And here's the thing. This is the steps that you take to listen better. That depends. It depends on where you have identified where are the blockages of all the filters, the five filters that I shared with you. The issues on focus, our impatience to really listen and to improve our skillsets. Where do you lie on that spectrum? Is it one main thing? Is it two things or maybe all five of them, right? So your strategy on how you can improve your listening skills depends on where you have identified your filters are. The strongest filters. Those are the things that are going to be preventing you from listening well, listening better and understanding and also being able to retain what you have heard. So which one is it? Which one of those filters have you identified? That is going to be your, that is going to give you the clue on what you need to be aware of and therefore what you need to improve on in order to have those filters removed and have an awareness of it, to be on the other side of the table and understand where your teammates or where the other person, your audience, what lens, what filters do they have on, right? And you might be listening to this and maybe you feel disappointed that I'm not giving you a step-by-step formula. Well, here's the thing. There's no one size fits all. There is no one size fits all. If I told you step one, do this, step two, do that. And then you went ahead, maybe for your particular situation, it's different, right? Maybe for you culture is the one that beats all the other filters. Maybe it's language, right? Maybe it's values. Maybe it's your attitudes. So I cannot give you a one size fits all solution because there isn't one, but I have given you enough in this video for you to have the awareness of where to start and how to build your strategy, right? So I've given you enough that you can build your strategy from a heightened level of awareness. But if you are somebody who doesn't want to figure this out, you're on your own. If you are somebody who wants the guidance to help you piece it together for your particular situation, I mentioned it earlier, apply below. Below this video, there's a link once again, and that is for my executive coaching program, where I'm going to walk you through step-by-step. First of all, getting to know your particular situation. And again, this is for you if you are an executive, if you are an established career professional and you want to take it to the next level of your leadership. If that's you, then click on the link below, apply and to see if you qualify to work with me. And I look forward to seeing you on the inside.