At IXI we know that active listening is a critical skill that is proven to enhance your personal and professional relationships. Active listening involves entirely focusing on, understanding, and responding to a speaker, rather than passively 'hearing' them. One of the most overlooked aspects of active listening, surprisingly, is silence. This isn’t just remaining noiseless. It involves the strategic use of effective pauses to avoid needless interruptions to further the listening process. This article delves into the effective pause as crucial to the listening process.
Understanding Active Listening
Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to fully concentrate, understand, respond, and then remember what is being said (Hargie, 2011). It's not just about 'hearing' the words; It is not listening just to respond; it's about 'listening' to the message, both verbally and non-verbally. There are several active listening skills (ALS) that contribute to understanding and interest as well as making sure you remember what is being said.
Active listening is not a feel-good internet tip or afterthought advice for a business lecture. It is more than “use the 80/20 rule” or as some off-the-shelf trainings put it, “just listen actively.” Active listening is a set of foundational communication techniques that build your relationships, enhance information gathering, and allow you, the listener, to be more effective in whatever it is you do. People characterize competent listeners in initial interactions, in business or government, as attentive, friendly, understanding, responsive, and able to manage the flow of conversation. In other words, listeners get positive attributes assigned to them.
Getting Things Started
An important piece of active listening is the use of open-ended questions which oftentimes sets up our pauses. These questions make pauses even more effective, hence their name, effective pauses. When asked properly open-ended questions prompt an interviewee or listener to give a longer narrative answer. In one study, open-ended questions more than doubled the number of words in the average response length (Snook et al., 2012), in contrast to closed-ended questions. Open-ended narrative answers are filled with more data, clues, understanding, and insight. After an open-ended question has landed, this is where the active listening part begins for you the inquirer, and now the listener.
The Power of the Pause
Silence is communication and effective pauses are powerful tools. They give the listener time to process information and the speaker time to gather their thoughts. Effective pauses can enhance understanding, create emphasis, and improve the overall flow of conversation (Goldsmith, 2016). Silence, indeed, has an important role in a talk. It might indicate that the speaker requires more time to respond or could indicate for them to continue. Silence, particularly a long one, may indicate hesitation or indecisiveness of a speaker. All in all, it is obvious that silence never means nothing (Cwodhury et al. 2017).
Why are pauses so effective?
Enhances Understanding: Effective pauses allow listeners to process and internalize what has been said. Listeners don't have to hurry to the next question or worse try to think of another one immediately.
Greater Information Flow: Pauses allow additional time for memory retrieval on the part of the respondent. Pausing allows them to gather their thoughts and continue contributing to their previous statement.
Modeling Desired Behavior: During tense and/or sometimes contentious conversations pauses will set the tone. They will assist in bringing these types of interviews to a conversational tone and are essential to effective de-escalation. The listener is not in a hurry (like above), they take their time, and like stated above they give the respondent time to talk (or vent).
Makes Questions More Powerful: Pausing both prior to and following a question offers distinct benefits. A pause before asking can grab the listener's attention, adding weight to the question. A pause afterward signals to the respondent that a thoughtful answer is anticipated.
Building Rapport: Active listening builds trust and rapport, which are crucial for healthy relationships. By pausing not interrupting thoughts, you show the speaker that you care about what they have to say, which can strengthen your relationship. Everyone loves a great listener.
Embrace silence and use it as a tool to enhance understanding and even create emphasis. Don't feel the need to fill every silence with words or worse "umms" and "uhhs". Most times, silence is more powerful than words.
Finally, active listening is a powerful skill that can enhance our communication and relationships. By mastering effective pauses, you will become a better listener and therefore a better interviewer, sharper investigator and a more effective leader. It will take practice, active listening is a perishable skill and must be practiced often, but the benefits are well worth the effort. Imagine how powerful your pauses will become when you couple them with other active listening and communication skills.
References:
Chowdhury, S. A., S., E. A., Morena .D, & Giuseppe, R. (2017). Functions of Silences towards Information Flown in Spoken Conversation. Proceedings of the Workshop on Speech-Centric Natural Language Processing. Denmark: for Computational Linguistics (1) (PDF) Interruptions and Silences in Conversations: A Turn-Taking Analysis. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328660344_Interruptions_and_Silences_in_Conversations_A_Turn-Taking_Analysis [accessed Aug 01 2023].
Goldsmith, J. (2016). The Power of Pause: How to be More Effective in a Demanding, 24/7 World. Amazon.
Hargie, O. (2011). Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice. Routledge.
Snook, B., Luther, K., Quinlan, H., & Milne, R. (2012). Let ’em talk!: A field study of police questioning practices of suspects and accused persons. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39(10), 1328–1339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854812449216
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