The Art of Active Listening

Active listening is a method of paying attention and responding to another person, which improves each person’s mutual understanding of the conversation at hand. Often, when people talk to each other, they don’t really listen attentively to what the other person is saying. They’re often distracted — half listening and half thinking about something else.

Yet, when people are actively engaged in a conversation, they’re frequently responsive to what is being said. Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding, that inherently focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and often must repeat, in the listener’s own words, what she thinks the speaker has said.

This is exactly what happens when someone retweets someone else’s tweet. The listener doesn’t have to agree with the speaker — she simply restates what they think the speaker said — in 140 characters or less. [Read] The Art of Active Listening

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