Active listening and asking good questions

Most people think good conversation is about being interesting. Research suggests it is more about being interested: listening properly and asking the right questions makes people feel understood and makes you easier to like.

What active listening means

• Active listening means focusing fully on understanding the other person, not just waiting for your turn to speak.
• The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) breaks it into six skills: pay attention, withhold judgement, reflect, clarify, summarise and share.
• These skills work with friends, family, teachers and, later, managers and colleagues. They are the same skills counsellors and coaches use.
• Kids Helpline notes that in a disagreement, your friend may mainly want to feel heard. Listening first often calms things down before you say anything at all.

Pay attention and hold back judgement

• Give the speaker room to think. Allow pauses, do not cut in, and keep eye contact in a way that feels natural (CCL).
• Put your phone face down or away. The World Health Organization lists putting your phone away to be fully present in conversations as one simple way to build social connection.
• Hold back criticism and resist jumping in with your own opinion or a solution straight away. Relaxed, open body language helps the other person keep talking.
• Notice the urge to turn the story towards yourself ('That happened to me too, but worse'). Save your story for later, if at all.

Reflect, clarify and summarise

• Reflect: repeat the key point in your own words and name the feeling you notice. CCL's example: 'Sounds like you're feeling pretty frustrated and stuck.'
• Clarify: ask about anything unclear. Useful openers from CCL: 'Let me see if I'm understanding. Are you talking about...?' and 'Tell me about...'.
• Summarise: before the conversation moves on, check you have got it right: 'Let me summarise to check my understanding... Did I get that right?'
• Reflecting works at home too. ReachOut suggests that when a parent says 'I'm sick and tired of asking you to clean your room', replying 'I hear that you really want me to clean my room' can ease the tension.
• Only share your own ideas once the other person feels understood (CCL). Then offer them as questions or options, not orders.

Asking questions people enjoy answering

• Harvard researchers (Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson and Gino) studied more than 300 conversations, including online get-to-know-you chats and short face-to-face meetings, and found a 'robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking' (CNBC report of the study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).
• Follow-up questions, which build on what the other person has just said, had the strongest link to being liked, because they show you were actually listening.
• Example: your classmate says 'I spent the weekend at my cousin's farm in Al Ain.' A follow-up question is 'What was the best part?' A topic switch is 'Cool. Did you watch the match?'
• Use open questions (starting with what, how, tell me about) to invite longer answers. Closed questions (yes or no) are fine for checking facts.
• Do not turn a chat into an interview. The researchers caution that too many questions can feel overwhelming; a few good follow-ups are enough.

Common listening mistakes

• Planning your reply while the other person is still speaking.
• Offering advice when the person only wanted to be heard. If unsure, ask: 'Do you want ideas, or do you just want to vent?'
• Saying 'I know exactly how you feel.' You probably do not; 'That sounds really hard' is more honest.
• Checking your phone or watching a screen while someone tells you something that matters to them.