Active Listening: A skill or a mindset?

Most people are familiar with the skills of active listening that were developed by Carl Rogers over 50 years ago. Rogers asserted that when people actively listen which includes paraphrasing, asking appropriate questions and keeping eye contact; they improve communication, allow feelings to surface which often drive tense conversations, and diffuse conflict. What is less well known however is that Rogers believed that there were three critical parts to active listening which he called congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard.

Congruence is being authentic and being comfortable with your own feelings as well as those of the other. It also involves the self-knowledge to know what you feel and value. For Rogers active listening was impossible if one did not have this self-awareness.

Empathy involves feeling with another person. It is different from sympathy which can be thought of as feeling sorry for another and can unintentionally be disempowering for the speaker.

Unconditional positive regard involves a mindset of totally accepting the other person and what they are feeling at the moment. In Points of Influence by Morley Segal he gives an example of what this acceptance might look like. If “an angry child tells her mother, ‘I hate you’, the mother may respond, ‘You shouldn’t talk to me that way’. Or the mother could say, ‘It doesn’t make me feel good to hear you say that, but I understand your angry feelings.’” In the first example the mother communicated that what the child was feeling was not acceptable. In the second, the mother accepted the child and what the child was feeling and accepted and named what she was feeling.

These three mindsets go well beyond making eye contact and parroting what the other person is saying. Active listening can be a powerful tool in resolving conflicts, but if we are judging the other person or unable to feel with them, the results will be very limiting. To really make active listening work for you remember to empathize, accept, and be authentic yourself.

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