Academic Leadership

Academic Leadership: Fundamental Building Blocks

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Active Listening: A Core Competency for Leadership

Active listening involves:

• Looking interested through reflective listening – facing the speaker, maintaining
  eye contact, staying relaxed, leaning forward slightly and maintaining open posture.
  Use verbal and non-verbal signals to illustrate your interest and to encourage
  dialogue. Verbal reflective listening examples are things such as “oh”, “tell me
  more”, “really!” “interesting”. Non-verbal reflective listening strategies are things such
  as head nodding and facial gestures.


• Inquiring without question or judgement – Clarify meanings, get the full story. If
  you start to disagree, you start to make mental arguments to counter the message
  and then of course miss what is being said.


• Staying on target – Stick to the point, listen for the central theme, think ahead, wait
  for the complete message and don’t interrupt.


• Testing your understanding through reflective listening – paraphrase, “can you
  rephrase what has just been said?”


• Evaluating the message – analyse what is said and expressed:
  
  
  • reasoning
  
  
  • fallacies
  
  
  • generalisations
  
  
  • cause linked to effect
  
  
  • emotional appeal
  
  
  • evidence
  
  
  • facts or assertion
  
  
  • information source
  
  
  • reliability
  
  
  • language
  
  
  • jargon
  
  
  • body language
  
  
  • voice related indications.
  
  
  
  


• Your feelings – Stay calm, don’t become emotional and keep an open mind.

Activity

Make a conscious effort to employ active listening at your next meeting. Make some

notes in your journal on:

• what you observed;


• when you did; and


• what you learned from this approach.