A personal brand expert explains active listening: stop planning your response while someone talks. Your brain jumps ahead and misses what they actually need. Stay quiet, absorb their words, and you'll understand them better.
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So active listening is where you're not listening with the intent of answering the question. You're actually listening for the whole bit of information that comes through there. What are the concerns? What are they actually asking for? Because so many times we'll start listening to somebody and our brain jumps ahead to, oh, this is the answer that they want, and you miss a key piece of what they're trying to tell you or what they want to discuss because in your mind you've already formulated, oh, this is what they want to know, when in And in reality, it's something else entirely that they're trying to get to. But because you tuned out already formulating your answer, you missed out on the key that they were trying to give you. And so sometimes the best thing you can do is just be quiet and listen. Give them a floor to share, you know, what are their aspirations, what are their goals.