Active listening here is Rogers and Farson's, and the items quote them closely. Learn the three requirements and the named barriers.
The three things an active listener must do
Listen for total meaning; respond to feelings; note all cues.
- Not paraphrase/summarize/question, which are techniques rather than the named requirements.
- Not attend/encode/provide feedback, which is transmission-model vocabulary they do not use.
- Suspending judgment belongs, but giving advice and reassuring are barriers, not requirements.
Total meaning
Every message has two components: the content and the feeling or attitude underlying it.
Their illustration: "I've finished that lathe setup" versus "Well, I'm finally finished with that damned lathe setup." The content is the same, but the total meaning has changed. The point is the feeling layer, not that nonverbal cues override content.
Note all cues
Attend to the speaker's hesitation, inflection, facial expressions, body posture and hand movements. Restricting yourself to the words alone contradicts the requirement outright. Watching other people's reactions, or waiting for a written follow-up, moves attention off the speaker.
Conveying, not just grasping
Active listening means getting inside the speaker and grasping what is communicated from his point of view, and more than that, conveying to the speaker that you are seeing things from his point of view.
- Parroting is not understanding. Merely repeating another's words proves only that you heard them. The test is reflecting in your own words what the speaker seems to mean, until the understanding is communicated to the other's satisfaction.
The barriers
- Passing judgment, whether critical or favorable, makes free expression difficult. Positive evaluations are sometimes as blocking as negative ones.
- Advice and information are almost always seen as efforts to change a person, and so serve as barriers.
- Rogers and Farson name the exact phrase: "I'm sure everything will work out O.K." is not a helpful response to someone deeply discouraged about a problem.
Reserving judgment until the end and then stating agreement or disagreement still ends in evaluation. That is not the answer.