Active Listening
Active listening is a communication technique described by Carl Rogers and Richard Farson in 1957 in which the listener tries to grasp the full meaning of what a speaker says, including feelings, and shows that understanding back. Its core behaviors are attention, paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, asking clarifying questions and summarizing.
Quick facts
- Type
- Interpersonal skill (communication technique)
- Origin
- Carl R. Rogers & Richard E. Farson, Active Listening (1957), from Rogers' client-centered therapy
- Used when
- Hearing concerns, interviewing stakeholders, coaching and handling resistance
- Related models
- Rogers' core conditions; GROW coaching model; communication model
- Exam relevance
- APMG CM Practitioner, People & Change (PC0212); not in the Foundation syllabus
What is active listening?
Carl Rogers and Richard Farson wrote about active listening in 1957, drawing on Rogers' client-centered approach to therapy and applying it to managers and other people at work.
Their argument was that people change their attitudes more readily when they feel understood than when they are told, criticized or advised. The listener therefore tries to grasp the total meaning of a message: its content and the feeling behind it. The listener responds to the feeling as well as the facts, and notices all the cues, including tone, pauses and body language.
Active listening is therefore an attitude of trying to understand before responding, not a set of phrases.
What are the components of active listening?
Later teaching usually breaks the skill into five behaviors:
- Attention: giving the speaker undivided focus, with open posture, eye contact and no interruptions.
- Paraphrasing: restating the content in your own words to check that you have understood it.
- Reflecting feelings: naming the emotion you hear, such as worry, frustration or relief.
- Clarifying questions: open questions that invite the speaker to say more, without steering toward your own answer.
- Summarizing: drawing the main points together at the end, so both sides agree on what was said.
This five-part list is a common synthesis rather than Rogers and Farson's own wording. Researchers such as Weger and colleagues (2014) define the skill in similar terms: nonverbal involvement, paraphrasing and questions that encourage the speaker to elaborate.
The components of active listening all serve one purpose: showing the speaker that they have been understood.
How can a change manager use active listening?
At Brightwater Health, nurses on one ward push back against a new electronic prescribing process. The ward manager holds short one-to-one conversations instead of repeating the benefits. One nurse says the new screens slow her down at night. The manager reflects: "You're worried that night rounds will run late and patients will wait." The nurse then explains a specific problem with how night doses are recorded.
The change team adds a fix for night doses to its backlog. Listening turned a general complaint into a usable issue, and the nurse felt heard.
Active listening helps in stakeholder interviews, impact assessment, listening sessions and coaching. It also treats resistance as information rather than as an obstacle.
Active listening is therefore one of the main ways a change manager learns what a change really means to the people affected.
What does research say about active listening?
Studies support the core claim that being listened to well changes how people feel about a conversation. Weger and colleagues (2014) found that speakers who received active-listening responses felt more understood than those who received simple acknowledgments or advice.
Kluger and Itzchakov (2022) reviewed research on listening at work. They link high-quality listening to better performance, trust and well-being, and to clearer thinking in the speaker.
The evidence is less clear on whether specific techniques, such as paraphrasing, matter more than the listener's genuine attention and intent.
Active listening therefore has research support, but the evidence favors real attention over scripted technique.
What are common mistakes with active listening?
- Parroting: repeating the speaker's words mechanically, which sounds insincere.
- Listening to reply: preparing a counter-argument while the other person is still talking.
- Using it to persuade: treating listening as a tactic to win agreement. People notice, and trust drops.
- Rushing to fix: offering solutions before the speaker has finished explaining the problem.
- No follow-up: listening carefully and then doing nothing with what was heard.
Listening does not mean agreeing. A change manager can understand a concern fully and still explain why the change will go ahead.
Active listening works only when it is genuine and when what is heard leads to a visible response.
Active listening vs. developmental feedback: what is the difference?
| Active listening | Developmental feedback | |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | Receiving: the other person speaks | Giving: the other person hears about their behavior |
| Main aim | Understand the speaker's meaning and feelings | Help the person learn and improve |
| Core behaviors | Attention, paraphrasing, reflecting, clarifying, summarizing | Specific, behavioral, timely, two-way comments |
| Typical moment in a change | Hearing concerns and resistance | Reinforcing or correcting new ways of working |
| Risk if misused | Becomes a persuasion tactic | Becomes judgment that triggers defensiveness |
Active listening and developmental feedback work together: listening first makes feedback easier to hear, and two-way feedback depends on listening.
Exam focus
Active listening (PC0212) is assessed at Practitioner level, by application to a case study rather than by recall. Expect to judge which response in a scenario shows real listening, such as a paraphrase or a reflection of feeling, rather than advice, reassurance or a rebuttal. A common trap treats active listening as agreeing with the speaker or as a way to win them over.
FAQ
What are the five skills of active listening?
The five skills usually taught are paying full attention, paraphrasing the content, reflecting the feelings you hear, asking clarifying questions and summarizing. The list is a teaching synthesis rather than a single original source, but each element appears in Rogers and Farson's work or in later research on listening.
Who invented active listening?
The term is credited to the psychologist Carl Rogers and Richard Farson, who described it in a 1957 paper on listening at work. It grew out of Rogers' client-centered therapy, which held that people change more readily when they feel understood rather than judged.
Does active listening mean agreeing with the other person?
No. Active listening shows that you have understood what the other person means and feels. You can understand a concern fully and still disagree, or still explain why a change will go ahead. Understanding often makes that conversation easier.
Why is active listening important in change management?
People affected by a change often raise concerns that contain useful information about risks, gaps or local impacts. Active listening helps a change manager hear those details, reduces defensiveness and builds trust, which makes later communication and support more effective.
What is the difference between paraphrasing and reflecting feelings?
Paraphrasing restates the content of what someone said in your own words, to check the facts. Reflecting feelings names the emotion behind the words, such as worry or frustration. Rogers and Farson stressed that responding to feelings matters as much as responding to content.
Sources
- Rogers, C. R. & Farson, R. E. (1957). Active Listening. Industrial Relations Center, University of Chicago. Reprinted 2015, Martino Fine Books.
- Weger, H., Castle Bell, G., Minei, E. M. & Robinson, T. C. (2014). The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions. International Journal of Listening, 28(1), 13–31.
- Kluger, A. N. & Itzchakov, G. (2022). The Power of Listening at Work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 9, 121–146.
- Itzchakov, G. & Kluger, A. N. (2018). The Power of Listening in Helping People Change. Harvard Business Review.
- Last reviewed