Listening is a skill that’s vitally important, sadly undertaught, and physically and mentally taxing. In today’s workplace, it’s never been more important, or more difficult, for leaders to listen well. That’s why this issue of Howe’s Now Monthly shares nine tips to help leaders become more active listeners, drawing on a Harvard Business Review article that breaks down the subskills of listening and how to strengthen each one.
Why is good listening important?
Listening is a skill that’s vitally important, sadly undertaught, and physically and mentally taxing. For leaders at schools and agencies serving blind students — facing chronic shortages of TVIs, O&M specialists, and other credentialed staff — it has never been more important, or more difficult, to listen well. Specialized educators are hard to find and harder to replace.
Leaders who fail to listen and respond thoughtfully to the concerns of their team risk losing the very people whose expertise is most difficult to backfill. And the stakes go beyond retention: when staff and families don’t feel heard, they stop sharing the information leaders need to serve students well.
Therefore, this issue of Howe’s Now Monthly shares nine tips to help leaders become more active listeners, drawing on a Harvard Business Review article that also breaks down the subskills of listening and how to strengthen each one.
Understand the three dimensions of active listening.
Active listening has three components: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. Unfortunately, growth in one dimension doesn’t automatically translate to growth in another. The cognitive dimension is paying attention to all the information you’re receiving — both explicit and implicit — and integrating it. The emotional dimension is staying calm and compassionate, including managing reactions like annoyance or boredom. The behavioral dimension is conveying interest and comprehension, verbally and nonverbally. Strong listeners work on all three.
Practice these nine tips to become a better listener.
The HBR authors offer a “cheat sheet” of nine concrete habits that can make a meaningful difference in how well you listen, even when practiced imperfectly.
- Repeat people’s last few words back to them. Direct repetition makes the speaker feel heard, keeps you anchored in the conversation, and gives both of you a brief pause to gather thoughts.
- Don’t “put it in your own words” unless you need to. Paraphrasing adds emotional friction and mental load, so save it for moments when you genuinely need to check your understanding, and say so explicitly when you do.
- Offer nonverbal cues that you’re listening but only if it comes naturally to you. Eye contact, nodding, and attentive posture matter, but if performing them pulls focus from the speaker, tell people up front that you’re naturally non-reactive.
- Pay attention to nonverbal cues. Tone of voice, facial expression, and body language usually carry the motivation and emotion behind the words.
- Ask more questions than you think you need to. Extra questions deepen the speaker’s sense of being heard, confirm your own understanding, and surface details that might otherwise slip by.
- Minimize distractions as much as possible. Reduce external noise and interruptions, and re-center yourself beforehand so internal preoccupations don’t pull you out of the conversation.
- Acknowledge shortcomings. If you’re depleted, unfamiliar with the topic, or lose the thread mid-conversation, name it and ask the speaker to repeat themselves rather than fake your way through.
- Don’t rehearse your response while the other person is talking. People think roughly four times faster than they speak — use that extra bandwidth to absorb what’s being said, not to draft your reply.
- Monitor your emotions. When you feel a reaction rising, slow the pace through repetition and breathing rather than tuning the speaker out or rushing to argue back.
At the very least, know your weak spots and name them.
Listening isn’t one skill but many: hearing, auditory processing, reading body language, maintaining attention, regulating your emotions, integrating multiple streams of information, and “performing” active listening through eye contact and facial expressions. Most of us are stronger in some than others. The authors recommend honest self-awareness: if you know going into a conversation that you’re depleted, unfamiliar with the topic, or naturally non-reactive in your expressions, say so up front. Acknowledging a limitation is far less costly than letting it quietly undermine the conversation. And remember — even small improvements in any single subskill can meaningfully sharpen your overall effectiveness.