Active listening exercises are a great opportunity to improve your active listening skills and have some fun. Being an active listener can come naturally and can also be developed.
Active listening skills are very important in effective communication. You can’t be a good communicator if you are not a good listener.
Active listening skills are very important in every aspect of your life, both personal and professional life. Research also suggests that active listening has a lot of health benefits such as better learning, improved memory, treating anxiety problems, etc.
In this article, you will learn the definition of active listening, examples of active listening skills, and active listening exercises.
Table of Contents
What are Active Listening Skills?
Active listening refers to the process of listening attentively and understanding what the other person is saying. This method of listening makes the speaker feel heard and valued.
Active listening skills are the ability to make a conscious effort to listen attentively and understand the speaker’s messages.
Below are some examples of active listening skills:
- Paraphrase
- Ask open-ended questions
- Pay attention and show it
- Withhold judgment
- Avoid interruptions
- Pay attention to non-verbal cues
- Ask clarifying questions
- Give brief verbal affirmation etc.
20 Active Listening Exercises
These 20 active listening exercises are grouped into the four categories below:
- Make the speaker feel heard
- Listen to retain information
- Ask questions
- Pay attention to nonverbal cues.
Make the speaker feel heard
Active listening is mainly about making the speaker feel heard. As an active listener, you have to pay full attention and show it.
These active listening exercises will help you show people that you are paying attention to their messages.
1. List out examples of good and bad listening skills you know
Good listening skills include nodding, smiling, maintaining eye contact, displaying empathy, etc.
Bad listening skills may include: looking at your phone or watch, fidgeting, interrupting, rehearsing answers, etc.
This exercise will make you aware of the skills to avoid and the skills to develop.
2. Ask someone to share their past experiences
Tell your friends or family members, preferably two, to share a story of their past. For example, when the person was hospitalized on the first day at the university, etc.
When you are listening to the first person, try to ask questions. Then, share similar experiences when you are listening to the other person.
Ask each speaker when they feel heard and respected.
3. 3-minute vacation
In this activity, the speaker talks about their dream vacation for three minutes. The speaker has to describe what he/she wants from a holiday but without mentioning a destination.
While the speaker talks, the listener pays attention and uses only nonverbal cues to indicate interest in what the speaker is saying.
After 3 minutes, the listener has to summarize the key points of the speaker’s dream vacation and then guess the name of the destination.
Then the speaker reviews how close the listener was to what he/she said and needed. Also, the speaker reviews the listener’s nonverbal cues.
4. Discuss a general topic with your friend
Pair up with your friend and discuss a general topic. For example, inflation.
Each of you should take turns being the speaker or the listener. When the speaker is finished speaking, the listener should repeat the speaker’s main points and offer a compliment.
5. Many-to-one vs One-to-one
Have a group conversation with your friends (at least 3). Allow one person to talk at a time.
Then, have a one-to-one conversation with each of them. Ask, when did they feel heard most? Does the number of participants matters?
6. Paraphrase what the speaker said
Ask your friend to tell you about himself or herself – his favorite book, worst life experiences, etc.
As he/she speaks, maintain positive body language like nodding and give verbal affirmations like “I agree,” “I understand,” etc.
When your friend (the speaker) is done talking, restate what he or she said. For example, “I heard you say your favorite musician is…”
Listen to retain information
Active listening isn’t just about making the speaker feel heard or giving non-verbal cues. It also requires listeners to make a conscious effort to remember what they hear.
The following active listening exercises will help you in retaining information.
7. Ask someone to tell a story
Ask someone to read stories to you and tell the person to ask you questions after narrating the story.
Questions like “what was the character’s name?” “Can you summarize the story?” etc.
8. Who Said It?
This active listening exercise involves two parts:
Part 1: You should watch a movie or an episode of a series with a friend. Listen to each dialogue clearly.
Part 2: Ask your friend to ask you questions based on what a particular character said.
For example, which character said life is not problematic?
9. Read a storybook
If you don’t have anyone that can tell you a story, then read short storybooks that often contain questions at the end of each chapter.
After reading each chapter, answer the questions and go back to read the chapter to check if your answers were right.
10. Take Note
During presentations in school or at the workplace, listen to the speaker, then jot down his messages in your words i.e. paraphrase.
You can always go back to this note Incase you forget any of the speaker’s messages.
11. Play the “spot the change” game
This is a two-person activity. Ask your friend to read a short story to you. Then he/she should read it again, after making some changes.
Each time you hear a change, clap or raise your hand to indicate that there was a chance.
12. Hold your questions
Tell your friends to create a WhatsApp group. Give them a certain topic to discuss in the group.
Your friends (all of them in the group) should be admins. You should also be added to this group but shouldn’t be an admin.
Before your friends start discussing, the group settings should be changed to only admins who can send messages.
After they are done discussing the topic, they can open the group, so that you can ask your questions.
This way you have no choice but to keep your questions till they are done speaking. There will be no room for interruptions.
13. Read a long blog post
Try to read a long article (at least 1,500 words). Pay full attention when you are reading this article.
Most article writers usually add questions at the end of the article. Look for these questions and provide answers in the comment section.
Ask questions
Asking relevant questions is very important in active listening. You can ask questions to seek clarification or gain additional information.
These exercises will help you with asking relevant questions at the appropriate time.
14. Clarification vs No clarification
Tell your friend to send you on an errand. For example, help me with my bag. Go and bring any bag without asking questions.
Tell the same friend to send you on an errand again. For example, help me with my shoe. But this time ask for clarification.
You can ask these questions:
- Do you mean your flat shoe or your sneakers?
- Is it the red sneakers?
After performing these tasks, ask your friend when you delivered to his/her satisfaction. Was it when you asked questions or when you didn’t?
This active listening exercise teaches the importance of seeking clarification to improve one’s understanding of a topic.
15. Play a drawing game
This is another two-person exercise. You can do this exercise with your friends, siblings, or even your parents.
Tell your friend (or anyone you choose as your partner) to get a sheet containing various shapes like triangles, circles, squares, etc.
You should get a pencil and a sheet of paper but a blank one. Then, you and your friend should sit back to back.
Ask your friend to describe the shapes on the sheet with him. Then draw the shapes based on the answers from your friend.
Finally, both sheets should be compared to see if you accurately replicated the drawing.
This exercise will show you the importance of asking the right questions to gain the necessary information.
16. The Three Whys
This activity requires two people – a speaker and a listener.
The speaker would talk about any topic of their interest for about a minute. Then, the listener needs to pay close attention to what the speaker is saying and be able to ask “why” questions.
These questions are not already answered by the speaker during their one minute of speaking. The idea is to find questions that have not been answered by the speaker.
This activity exercise will help you learn how to ask relevant questions, which will provide additional information.
Pay attention to nonverbal cues
Nonverbal cues are capable of communicating thousands of words. During conversations, you should always be aware of your nonverbal cues and that of the speaker.
These active listening exercises will teach you the importance of paying attention to non-verbal cues.
17. Talk to an absent-minded listener
This is a two-person exercise, where the speaker talks about something they are passionate about. The speaker should use a lot of nonverbal cues like facial expressions, hand gestures, etc.
The listener, unknown to the speaker, should be instructed to display disinterest using nonverbal cues such as looking at a phone, yawning, gazing around the room, leaning back in a chair, etc.
There will be a change in the speaker’s body language. The speaker will get really frustrated and annoyed.
This exercise shows the importance of positive nonverbal cues from the listener to the speaker.
18. Mime it out
This is a two-person activity. Give someone, maybe your friend or colleague, a story to read.
Your friend should read the story for about 5 minutes and come up with expressions that he/she feels are appropriate to describe the story.
At the end of 5 minutes, tell your friend to describe the story with non-verbal cues. You have to understand these non-verbal cues and tell your friend what the story is about.
This exercise will help you develop an understanding of nonverbal cues. You will also learn how to read nonverbal cues.
19. Listen without saying any word
Ask someone to tell you a story about his or her life – such as describe their last birthday event.
Listen without saying anything but give nonverbal cues. Ask the person if your nonverbal signals are encouraging or not.
20. Guess the Image
For this exercise, you need to create a team (at least 4 people). The team chooses one person to check an image and describe the image using hand gestures and other nonverbal cues.
This person will be facing the image and other team members will not face the image. The remaining team members try to guess the name of the image described based on nonverbal cues.
Play this game repeatedly, and exchange roles with other team members. This exercise will teach you how to read and interpret nonverbal cues.
We Also Recommend:
- Listening Communication Skills: A Complete Guide
- Written Communication Skills: A Complete Guide
- Nonverbal Communication Skills: A Complete Guide
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Reading Books.
Conclusion
The listed above active listening skills are capable of improving your ability to listen actively.
If you wish to improve your listening skills more, explore our article on active listening. You will learn the key active listening skills that will change your life.
We will like to know if you have used any of the active listening exercises. Did you notice any improvement? Let us know in Comment Section.
