4 Tips for Active Listening | Jim Kwik

In our last session, we talked about one of the big supervillains that holds us back from being successful, and that was procrastination. In this session, I wanna talk about another supervillain that takes away from our ability to be able to engage, to focus, to learn stuff. I wanna talk about how to be an active listener. You know, what I'm gonna share with you, it's gonna change your learning, it's gonna change your life, but it requires you to really pay attention. But have you ever been in a lecture center And you're there listening and trying to listen, you're falling asleep. Or you're in a classroom, or you're with your TA, or your tutor, or your study group, and you are just fading away and you can't hear anything that's really going on. How do you fix that? How do you engage your ability to listen? Because information is mostly gonna come to you either through what you see, Or what you hear? Because in school, in your studies, information's gonna come mostly from what you see and what you hear. And so how do we tune in to the things that we really need to listen and pay attention to? So in this session, I'm gonna share with you a number of tips on how to be an active listener. Now the first thing I wanna talk about is whole brain listening, because you're not just listening with your ears, you're also kind of taking information with your eyes, and people communicate information, not just with what they say or how they say it, but with their body. In fact, most information when it comes to human communication, more than half of it is communicated through body language. So I just want to sensitize you to not just listen to the person, but watch the person as well. Look how engaged and how they're feeling at the moment. You're going to get a lot of information, not just through your hearing, but your sense of sight. But going back to your sense of hearing, make sure you're in good ear health, that you have good hearing health, which means go to the doctor. A lot of people struggle with their sense of hearing and their listening because they've listened to loud music too much and it compromises their ability to take in information. So get your ears checked. But when it comes to the actual active listening strategy, here are 4 things to do to become an active listener. I want you to remember the acronym HEAR. Jim is full of acronyms, right? HEAR. H-E-A-R. H-E-A-R. What does the H stand for? I want you to write this down. The H stands for halt. Halt. Literally stop. Most people are not good listeners because they're not really listening. They're waiting for their turn to speak, or they're thinking about how they're going to respond to somebody else. Can you relate to this? You're talking to yourself, you're not really listening, and the problem is the other person feels it, don't they? So what I want you to do, if you write down the word listen, remember, if you organize, move the letters around, what does it spell again? It spells the word silent. Just halt And be silent. So that's their first tip. Just halt and be silent. Really listen and be present. The E in HERE stands for empathy. Empathy. Remember this, one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I always reference this book by Dr. Stephen Covey here, is seek first to understand, then to be understood. Seek, always seek to first understand, then to be understood. Nothing compels people or communicates to people, nothing really influences people like sincere interest, right? It's not just about being interesting. A lot of times when you're meeting somebody at a party, you're meeting someone, you know, you're making new friends at school, a lot of people wanna be interesting and talk about all the things that make them interesting. And while that's nice and all, what's more powerful is to be interested. So be more interested than interesting. And so the E stands for empathy. Empathy is a feeling that you understand where that person is coming from. You don't have to agree with that person, but this is where you go into their metaphorical shoes. You're in their moccasins, you're in their shoes, and you're hearing it from their point of view, and you're feeling, and you're asking these questions like, what's their intent? Mm-hmm. What's their motivation? How do they feel at this moment? What is it like as they're describing something to me? What is it like to be in their place, to go through what they're going through? Because every single person is different, and that's the best thing about learning. You can learn from everybody. Everybody could be a great example, or they could be a warning to you also as well, but you can learn from everybody, but it requires you to get some empathy and see it from another person's point of view. So once you halt, And then you're listening, have empathy and imagine it from their point of view and what they are feeling. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. The A in here stands for anticipate. Anticipate. Once you halted and you're really listening, once you're feeling what they're feeling, I want you— anticipation for me comes in 2 forms: state and strategy. Anticipation is kind of like a feeling. What's it like to anticipate something? Have you ever been looking forward to something? So imagine you feeling that with that person, and they're going to feel that energy. Because Maya Angelou has this great quote. She says, people won't remember what you say, they won't remember what you did, but they'll always remember how you made them feel. And so when you anticipate being with somebody and you anticipate what they're about to say, that Feeling, they will feel that also. And that communication is a transfer of emotion. But in addition to feeling that in terms of state, we said that all learning is state-dependent, there's also a strategy for anticipation, meaning a set of questions you could ask yourself to see where that person is going because it gets you engaged. For example, we teach in our reading program, we teach you how to anticipate where the content is going. But I want you to do that the same in a conversation. Ask yourself, Where are they going with this? What do they really mean by this? How can I apply this, what they're saying? Because questions, as we've talked about in this program, are the answer. Seek and you shall what? Find. You shall find. Ask more questions, get more answers. And that's the secret to learning. That's the secret for having more comprehension. So I want you to remember, anticipate both in state, in the feeling, anticipate being with them, and also anticipate, ask yourself questions to see where this conversation's going. And then finally, R in HEAR is review. Review. What do I mean by review? I mean, once the conversation is coming to a close, I want you to reflect and review— that's what the R stands for— on that conversation. What did it mean? What did it mean from their point of view? What does it mean to you? And also, you could take their words and put them in your own words and talk back to them in your own words what you feel like you've heard. And so people love to feel validated. They wanna be seen, they wanna be heard, they want to be understood. And one of the ways to demonstrate that with active listening is to tell them what you think you just heard, because that means you are paying attention. One of the things you could do besides reviewing what you just heard from them is to ask questions of them. Ask detailed questions to show that you are paying attention and that you are sincerely interested in this information. So again, Kwik student, next time you want to be a more active listener in a conversation, in part of your learning process, as part of your student journey, I want you to remember 4 things. HEAR. H, halt. Listen. Be silent. The E is you want empathy. Engage your empathy and to really see it from their point of view. The A, Start anticipating, feel that anticipation, and also ask questions in your mind of where they are going with this conversation. And then finally, the R is review and reflect. Reflect on what they've just said, review, share what you think you've heard from them, and then ask questions to show them that you're really paying attention. And that will make you a more active listener. All right, Kwik Student, in the comments, what I wanna do is I want you to share What kind of listener are you? How would you rate your own listening skills from a 0 to a 10? And which area do you need to improve? Which of these tips do you want to engage in? It's gonna require a lot of listening. So absolutely build your listening muscles so you can pay attention for all that's to come.