Active listening

Active listening is a communication technique that is used in counseling, training and conflict resolution. It requires that the listener fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said.

When I joined Holiday Extras, I was pretty confident about my English skills. It took me no more than a few weeks to get used to some of the strongest accents which I had always considered a relatively tough task in my past. When I was in the UK office meetings were never an issue. After a few weeks when I got back to the office in Sofia, we had to regularly do remote meetings. In the beginning it was extremely hard for me to go through meetings where my pod (Trading pod at that time) gathered in a meeting room (Sandown at that time) and they talked to us using a set of microphones equipped in the room. Unless someone was speaking directly into the mic, understanding was a big pain for me. More than once I had agreed on something I didn’t completely understand and then asked my Bulgarian fellow and Trading pod member Kiril to explain to me what I had missed. Fortunately, he had been in the company for a few months and always helped me out in those situations. I spent some time asking teammates to move microphones here and there trying out different set-ups but it only helped a bit — there were still times that I didn’t understand everything that was discussed and meetings would have taken way too long if I constantly asked people to repeat. Then my line manager Steve told me about the concept of active listening and since then I’ve been looking for different ways to apply it.

For the last few months I have had basically no problem understanding anything at all and keeping myself active during remote meetings. Here is what has helped me the most.

Does listening to audio books have the same effect as reading books? I would say yes as long as you are actively listening all the time. I usually listen to audio books either at rest or on the move. When listening at rest, the plus is that I am not getting distracted but the minus is that I tend to get sleepy and miss on something. Coffee helps a lot here. When listening on the move I am certainly not getting sleepy but I can easily get distracted (traffic, traffic lights, crowds, etc…) but sometimes I found myself listening subconsciously although I felt I got distracted, which is very interesting to me. I think both ways help to increase active listening skills in a different way.

Like most people at first I was a bit skeptical about meditation until I started doing mindfulness meditation (there are a lot of apps for this — I’ve been recommended ‘Headspace’ by many and this is what I started to use and am still using). After doing it for a month or two I started to realize that it actually works. Apart from other obvious benefits like deeper sleep and fewer worries, the most well-known benefit is concentration which greatly helps active listening. A friend of mine (insanely smart) who is a physician once told me about a study where it was proved that we are most concentrated and perceptive when the volume of gamma and alpha waves in our brain is at its peak. When this happens, we soak up information like a sponge and solve problems like Sherlock Holmes. And guess what boosts these waves — compassion. When we are in a compassionate state our gamma waves hit the roof and one of the only ways to become more compassionate is through meditation. This leads me to think that when we are in a state of feeling other people’s pain we can read those people’s streams of information and connect with them at a spiritual level.

A 40+ minute morning workout boosts my metabolism for at least 6 hours. After such a workout basically nothing can distract me from what I am doing. I always schedule my morning workouts before important remote meetings. This also improves my mood and makes me very communicative.

This is the most effective way not to leave the office groggy. In the past I’ve had very tense work days that I have coded for hours without even standing up from the chair but after a few hours I would completely lose my effectiveness. Plus when it became time to leave the office the only thing I could think of was my bed. I never used timers because I hate notifications (I have turned off all kinds of notifications on my phone and laptop). I started to make an effort to take frequent but shorter breaks, and at first I was doing them every hour, then every 45 minutes and after some time I realized that I am regularly taking 5 minute breaks every half hour or 10 minute breaks every hour. This has helped me immensely in staying concentrated all the time. As for the active listening part, it’s crucial that I do a 5–10 minute break before every meeting. I try to move as much as possible or stretch my body during these breaks. Reason one, I feel more refreshed, and reason two, if I don’t, there’s chance that my brain will be trying to solve the problems I was working on before the meeting.

This is an obvious one. It gives me a huge energy boost and increases my visual attention, meaning that it decreases the remote barrier in meetings and helps me create images in my mind more easily. It is said that caffeine reaches its peak about an hour after drinking a cup of coffee but I’ve found that on an empty stomach it kicks in quicker and lasts longer. But for people with stomach issues, I advise against drinking coffee on an empty stomach.

I am sure everyone has had nights with insufficient sleep. When these occur or in other similar circumstances my awareness gets very low and I tend to stop reacting to what is around me and get lost somewhere in my mind without thinking or even blinking but just an empty stare. This one is about making conscious efforts to get back to where I was before as soon as I find myself somewhere else. Pinching myself is something that has worked for me (my skin hates me for that). After some time my mind started to kind of understand when I am not aware in the current moment and do these return-to-reality tricks by itself.

Did you actively read this blog post or did you just skim through it?

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