In our active world of communication, we cannot afford to exclude the art of listening. As a leader you must listen to your constituents in order to be effective. You need to listen and correctly understand all messages from all group members. Active listening differs from hearing.
Hearing is the act of perceiving audible sounds with the ear and is a passive act.
Listening, on the other hand, is the active pursuit of understanding what the other person is saying and feeling. In active listening, the receiver tries to understand what the sender is feeling and what the message means. It is important to feed back only what the listener feels the sender's message meant, nothing more, nothing less. This creates an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding in which the sender can explore the problem and determine a solution. To listen actively and to understand is not a passive or simple activity.