Active listening: the Swiss Army Knife of communication
11 comments
·October 27, 2025boncester
That was excellent!
Couple of tweaks though, try to avoid the same call for response, '..is that right?' or whatever. Patterns in speech become REALLY old REALLY quickly.. It can start to create a picture in their head that this is staged (and it kinda is) which then starts to cause them to raise walls up. Keep to the context of the question using whatever words you're comfy with 'X...? I got that right?', or 'soooooo... X yeah?' and they'll spot the pattern but because of the conversational nature of it their hackles will take a lot longer to raise.
The other thing is putting pauses in. Yes pauses are remarkably powerful, actual dead air forces the other side to fill it, but it also creates a pressure vacuum, it FEELS like minor bullishness and can start causing combativeness. For me if I want the conversation to feel level between two equals I'll instead fill the pauses with word-salad appropriate to whatever the context is with a couple of words in there to ping reactions. 'Oh wow, yeah the more I think about this the more I'm just... wow. Yeah that's annoying', where 'the more I think' is reflecting back that I agree there's something to what they are saying and 'annoying' to cause them to reflect on the irritation, trying to draw out that feeling more so they can then talk about the next layer down, but it's still basically a pause, it quietly says 'I hear you, I don't have anything to say right now, so go on...'
PandaRider
I concur with you (that this is an excellent introduction)!
Imo, your suggestions are more for intermediate/advanced active listeners that need to interact with folks in their job (e.g. bartenders, reporters, middle managers...).
Still, I feel being repetitive (e.g. 'It sounds like XYZ...is that right?') is better than nothing. Sometimes, training wheels aren't bad when learning how to ride a bike.
hshdhdhehd
Can we make it sound (and be) less like a mind trick by putting out opinion in.
E.g.
"I think Trumps approach to immigration will help increase jobs for Amercians and help the economy"
"OK sounds like you are for stricter immigration enforcement. I actually disagree for various reasons, but I am interested in knowing why you see this as helping the economy. Maybe I am missing something in my analysis"
drcxd
> Me: It sounds like you’ve got mixed emotions at the moment. On the one hand, you’re happy that your boss says you’re doing a good job. But you’re questioning that, given the problems you’re having with Legal. Did I get that right?
No offense. However, this response from the first example feels robotic to me. It feels like I am talking with some kind of artificial intelligence. I guess we have to make it sounds more natural. In fact, the following examples feel more smooth to me.
layer8
> The active listening formula is simple: […]
The instructions sound a lot like what Weizenbaum programmed into ELIZA. :)
lcuff
Yup. Weizenbaum knew about active listening.
hshdhdhehd
Is there a decent prompt for getting a modem LLM to do this (but without the Eliza lack of imagination). Would be fun to try out.
comrade1234
You've got to be kidding. The couple of times someone tried this with me I stopped and asked what the F are you doing?
It's very obviously fake. Seriously you can't see that?
lcuff
Nope, I don't see that. As a therapist, this is a big part of our training. Using it in a business context, there's more emphasis on ideas, whereas in therapy, you do ask people how it makes them feel. Often because people don't know how they feel, and that's important in intimate relationships.
It can land as awkward, un-natural, yeah even 'fake' when it's being used by somebody who is just learning it and is practicing, though after time it will lose those qualities. If people you know are using this on you, they might need to own that they're trying something different to get you into a comfort zone before pressing on.
No kidding here.
econ
I was going to say this goes against everything the US stands for. It is like that time Jamie Oliver almost got fast food banned.
In stead I'll share a funny routine/joke: If people interrupt me while I'm talking to them I tell them that if they do it again I'll slap them in the face. Inevitably they will do it again immediately. I then raise my hand and they stop talking half way their sentence. They make the best of faces.
The message is clear tho, don't jump in front of my train of thought. It might not be a very big train, it might not go very fast, even I might have no idea where it is going or if it even is, it feels important to me. That is all that matters.
It requires some practice to pull this off correctly. I have met quite some people who followed the instructions but it felt very scripted. And often it’s clear that they have ulterior motives and just use this as a tool.