World Listening Day: Tips for being a good listener

What is World Listening Day?

Celebrated on July 18^th, ‘World Listening Day’ is a global event that encourages people to actively participate in paying attention to the sounds around them. Active listening is important to us at fortis because it’s what we strive to do every day, in both our sessions and our own lives. Listening to one another helps build deeper relationships, and listening to the world around us can help ground us when were struggling mentally.

Here are some tips to make our listening skills as good as possible:

1. Active listening will show whoever you’re speaking with that you are engaged and interested in what they have to say, regardless of whether it’s a difficult conversation or a chat over a drink at the pub. Actively listening means engaging in eye contact or nodding your head to indicate your following what their saying. Alternatively, you can ask questions to indicate your engaged in the conversation or even summarise what they’ve said at the end, to ensure you understand.
2. Ask open-ended questions, this will continue the conversation and give you a better grasp of what the other person is trying to say, whilst demonstrating to them that you care about what they have to say. An example of this would be ‘How did that make you feel?’. It’s basically a question that needs more than a yes or no to answer, meaning you have to expand more, so the conversation goes a bit further.
3. Listen to more than just what someone is saying, and try to focus on their body language, e.g. whether or not their making eye contact, which could mean they feel shy or nervous. Posture also gives a good sense of what a person is feeling so it’s useful to take note of it.