In order to become an effective listener, you have to learn to manage what goes on in your own mind. Technology, for all its glorious gifts, has erected new barriers to listening. Meanwhile television continues to capture countless hours that might otherwise be available for conversation, dialogue, and listening. A good listener is not just a silent receptacle, passively receiving the thoughts and feelings of others. These responses are called feedback.
Verbal feedback works best when delivered in the form of brief statements, rather than questions.
Statements allow you to paraphrase and reflect what you've heard, which affirms the speaker's success at communicating and encourages the speaker to elaborate further or delve more deeply into the topic. Meaningful exchanges are built on feedback. In order to accurately feed back a person's thoughts and feelings, you have to be consciously, actively engaged in the process of listening. Hearing a statement, you create a mental model, vicariously experiencing what the speaker is describing, feeling the speaker's feelings through the filters of your own humanity and experience. Ten Steps to Effective Listening Face the speaker and maintain eye contact.