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10 Effective Active Listening Tips: Your Way To Closing More Deals

 

Active listening is so much more than nodding and repeating the last words of your conversation partner. And the benefits of effective active listening span from better relationships with coworkers to (potentially) closing more deals. Keep reading to get all the tips, and scroll down to read the transcript.

What is active listening?

Active listening is a communication technique where you carefully listen to what the other person is saying and observe their non-verbal cues. It means you are fully concentrated on what is being said, rather than waiting to reply or just passively hearing the speaker. Active listening involves paying attention, fully, with all senses, understanding, and providing feedback (for example, nodding or paraphrasing).  

Benefits of active listening

You can reap the benefits of active listening in all aspects of your life, including at work. Here’s why active listening is so important in the workplace:

  1. Information. Active listening helps you learn more about others and clearly understand what they are saying.
  2. Problem-solving. Identifying challenges and problems with projects quickly will help you find solutions sooner.
  3. Respect. When you listen with full attention, you are showing respect (which will help you gain their respect in return).
  4. Increased likability. People like to be listened to.  Make sure you truly pay attention to your conversation partner, show interest, and find common ground.
  5. Better relationships. Active listening helps us connect and build relationships with others, avoid miscommunication, and focus on understanding each other. By letting others speak without interruptions, you build trust
  6. Closing more deals. When you truly understand what a potential customer needs, you are able to tweak your message and adapt it to what they want/need to hear. Combine that with increased likability and better relationships and you have the perfect cocktail for closing more deals!
  7. Language learning. When it comes to English learning, active listening gives you time to take in and consider what you (and the other person) said. It also helps you consciously study the person you are communicating with, which can help you pick up on different vocabulary and terms you might not have known before. Did you know that short-term memory loss in the second language is much faster? Follow the tips below and retain more new words.
  8. Conflict resolution. Listening carefully and letting others talk will help you defuse tense situations. The ability to listen to and comprehend what the other person is saying is instrumental to working through conflict. When we paraphrase what we’ve heard, including their emotions, we provide new perspectives. We can reframe the message to help us move on and pursue constructive solutions to the conflict.

Barriers to effective active listening

The main barrier to effective active listening is usually inside our heads -including concerns, biases, and prejudices. Filtering is when the listener only focuses on what they expect to hear. Biases and prejudices might make us tune out other aspects of the message, and this prevents us from truly understanding what the other person is trying to say.

We all have internal issues and concerns, and when we are preoccupied, we don’t listen. It might look like it, but we don’t. Instead, we come with our own agenda, and instead of listening, we are rehearsing. Rehearsing happens when the listener is more focused on preparing their response, rather than listening.

We also seem to have a very brief attention span these days, and multitasking is more commonplace than focusing on one thing. We tend to get bored if we are not doing a zillion things at once, and fidgeting, checking our phones, and hearing constant Slack alerts coming in enormously hinder active listening.

And last but not least – language barriers. Active listening is complicated, and even more so when at least one of the people is not proficient in the language. If English is not your first language, try to include as much English in your life as possible – listen to movies in English, read the news in English, practice with friends and colleagues, get help from a teacher, and listen to podcasts in English [shameless plug: Talaera Talks Business English Communication will help you do that! :-)].

Cross-cultural communication is also a barrier. You may understand all the words, and still miss the message altogether. This is because different cultures communicate things in different styles (even YES and NO mean different things in different countries) and use body language differently.

Tips on effective active listening

Now that you understand what active listening is, all the benefits you can get from effectively doing it, and also what’s stopping you, from being a thoughtful communicator, what can you do to get it right? Here you have some important active listening tools to ensure conscious listening.

1. Be willing to unlearn

To truly listen and comprehend what the other person is saying, you may need to unlearn a few things. Starting by prejudices and biases! Start the conversation with an open mind, and take the words you hear for what they are, not for the mental image you’ve created in your head. You may also need to unlearn some preconceptions about what active listening is – and isn’t. For example, active listening is not about eye contact, intense stares, and repeating what the other person says (at least, it’s not only that). 

2. Consider non-verbal communication

Although eye contact is not everything when it comes to active listening, it does matter. Adopt a neutral or open body posture (uncross your arms and legs), stay patient and calm, and don’t fidget too much. Nodding or tilting your head is often seen as a signal that you are interested, curious, and involved in the conversation. Oh, and unless it’s a serious conversation, smiling is usually a good idea.

3. Use the RASA technique

Julian Treasure, a leading expert on sound and communication skills, recommends this technique to listen better.

RASA Technique, Active Listening Skills | Talaera BlogRASA Technique, by Julian Treasure

  1. Receive the message, pay attention to the person speaking.
  2. Appreciate by making little noises that show that you’re listening.
    1. Language bank: Uh-huh / OK / Yes, I see / Good / Really?
  3. Summarize the main idea. Reflect back on the message by repeating the message with your own words. It takes some practice but summarizing and paraphrasing is an excellent communication skill (both for native and non-native English speakers!). 
    1. Language bank: It sounds like… / In other words, what you are saying is… / So in a nutshell… / So if I understand correctly, the bottom line is… / What I’m hearing is… / Sounds like you are saying…
  4. Ask questions to clarify certain points. Make sure you only do it to ensure understanding. If your question diverted from the main topic, get the conversation back on track. You can also ask questions to offer encouragement. Also, open-ended questions are usually best.
    1. Language bank: What do you mean when you say…? / Is this what you mean? / It was great to hear about Anna, but tell me more about your adventure in London. / And then? / What happened next? / How did that make you feel? / What do you think is the best way to handle this situation?

4. Practice mindfulness

With all the multitasking going on these days, active listening has become an arduous task. Implement these small everyday habits to increase your concentration ability: spend 5 minutes in silence, meditate (Netflix’s Headspace Guide to Meditation is a great place to start!), try to identify different sound channels in a crowded place (e.g. crowd, rain, cars), and summarize messages to yourself. Joining an English course (or offering business English training to your team) will surely get you closer to effective listening and help you improve your communication skills for the professional sphere.

 

5. Focus on being interested, not interesting

Although perhaps counterintuitive, we are more likable when we show interest in the other person and what they’re saying (much more than we talk!). When you make it about them and are genuinely interested in them, not only will they like you for it, but you will also be more influential.

6. Look for common ground

Look for the experiences, characteristics, and beliefs that make you similar to the person you are talking to. We are so used to making distinctions and being unique, that we often forget that connection is about the opposite. Finding common ground will make your team more effective and help you close more deals with potential customers.

7. Let go of your agenda

Give up the need to be right. Don’t impose your solutions. Set your own agenda aside and save it for a different time.

8. Pay attention (truly)

If you want to truly listen, then make sure you are only doing that – listening. Put your phone away and get rid of potential distractions. Focus on what the other person is saying and use the RASA technique mentioned in point 3.

9. Don’t interrupt

Let them talk. You can nod and receive the message, but let them expand on their ideas. Especially if the message is important and/or serious, do not interrupt with “Ah, that happened to me when…” or “I got it worse”.

10. Accept (and embrace) the silence

Silence can be very uncomfortable in some cultures, but when you learn to embrace it, it’s actually not that bad. Allowing some silence grounds you. It shows respect for the other person, and it also shows confidence (for not everyone is able to refrain from the need to fill every silence).

This article works as supporting material of our podcast episode on active listening, you can read the transcript below. Make sure you check out all our other Talaera Talks episodes and subscribe to get new episode alerts.

Keep Improving Your Communication Skills for the Workplace

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If you enjoyed this article, keep reading:

Talaera Talks – Transcript Episode 14

If you are learning English, including new English words and expressions will help you with effective communication. Remember to check out our other episodes on how to make small talk, how to deliver engaging presentations, how to speak English fluently, and many more: visit the podcast website. Listen to it on your favorite platform:

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Intro
Welcome to Talaera Talks, the business English communication podcast for non-native professionals. My name is Paola and I am co-hosting this show with Simon. In this podcast, we’re going to be covering communication advice and tips to help express yourself with confidence in English in professional settings. So we hope you enjoy the show!

Simon Kennell 0:25
All right, so welcome back to another episode of Talaera Talks. My name is Simon and I’m joined with Paola. Paola, how are you today?

Paola Pascual 0:34
Hi, Simon. I’m great. I’m very, very good today. How are you?

Simon Kennell 0:38
I’m good. I’m good. I’m coming into the final stage of my thesis writing. So this is a kind of intense week for me. But it’s nice to have a little break and just kind of get away from it. But it’s kind of fun because we’re both writing a master’s thesis right now, aren’t we?

Paola Pascual 0:57
We are. Could you tell us just super briefly what your thesis is about?

Simon Kennell 1:03
Yeah. It’s like, at this point, I’m so over talking about it. But I’ll give… I’ll give a small little concept about it. It’s, so basically, I’m looking at virtual communities of practice within organizational learning. So how can we use, just kind of basic social functions of communities of practice within an organization, and how that helps with organizational information flow and learning… And all these exciting things that at this point, I’m almost… It’s like when you eat too much candy, and then you just…

Paola Pascual 1:41
… Had enough?

Simon Kennell 1:43
I’ll take a little break from, from all that. Yeah. How about yourself? What are you writing about?

Paola Pascual 1:48
Yeah, I’m feeling a little bit similar to you. With my topic, I still find it interesting. It’s about change management, and how managers (top managers, middle managers) can communicate change, to have everyone on board. So yeah, I’m developing a program for that.

Simon Kennell 2:08
That’s super practical, and, and exciting. Yeah, I think that’s definitely exciting. Exciting, but I mean, and what’s funny is both of these kind of link a little bit with our topic today, at least some of it can be applied. I mean, what are we talking about in today’s podcast?

Paola Pascual 2:31
Active listening. That’s today’s topic.

Simon Kennell 2:34
Active listening. Okay, and what is active listening? Because we hear that all the time active listening, you need to be an active listener, what does that mean?

Paola Pascual 2:43
I know, it’s interesting how much we hear about it. And then what does it actually truly mean? Do you have a definition you can give us?

Simon Kennell 2:55
Yeah, I mean, so. So I think the first thing to say as there is, and we talked a little bit about this, there’s kind of a lot around this topic where people think, okay, yeah, I get it, maybe it’s just a fancy way of saying that you really pay attention, right? But active listening is a little bit more than that. I mean, when we think about active listening, I think most people, including myself, probably think that I’m a good listener, right? But in reality, I mean, you know, even though we spend, I found this statistic that we spent 60% of our communication time listening, we’re not really good. And we’re really only retaining about 25% of what we hear. And there’s so many reasons around that, that we’ll discuss. But, but active listening is about how can we kind of mitigate this? How can we kind of make it so that we’re really retaining a lot of what we’re a lot of what’s coming in, and that we’re using that and more so a little bit as a kind of a trampoline, right? So instead of just taking it and then responding back where we’re taking it, but we’re absorbing it? And then we’re responding. I know, that’s a lot. Does that make sense?

Paola Pascual 4:06
It does. So it’s a bit about, I guess, there’s different aspects to it. Active listening is about really, truly understanding the whole message from the other person. And also, as you said, really taking it in and amplify, provide support, really modify your message, adapted to what the other person said.

Simon Kennell 4:29
Right. I mean, if I think about it, and I think, you know, when we research these topics, and when, if I really critically self reflect, you know, a lot of times I wonder how much of the time I’m just waiting for my chance to say the thing that’s like, you know, interesting to me, which is really bad. It’s really poor conversation. You know, this, I mean this in itself, doing this with you has kind of also been a little bit of a practice for me that this is a conversation. And even though I get really excited about things, it’s a two way it’s a two-way thing.

Paola Pascual 5:09
Let it go. It’s interesting because we try to. So sometimes we talk about being interesting versus being interested. And we try to be interesting most of the time, but we’re actually more likable when we’re interested, the more people talk. So if you let people talk, then they’re more likely to like you, which is quite funny.

Simon Kennell 5:34
It’s kind of counterintuitive, right? And this kind of goes into some of the benefits around this, right? So can you tell us maybe what are some of these benefits that we can get from active listening?

Paola Pascual 5:44
So the first one is trust. You build mutual trust, you can build trust with your colleagues, with friends, with your employees, with a potential customer. But then there’s also obviously less miscommunication, because you’re truly they’re paying attention to what they’re saying. And clarifying if there’s something you don’t understand. Obviously, when there is less miscommunication, there is better productivity and fewer arguments. So it’s all a win situation.

Simon Kennell 6:13
Right? Sounds like it. Yeah. And that, yeah, increasing problem-solving ability, and also, right, showing empathy and compassion. And, and I mean, there’s Yeah, all these good aspects to it. But I mean, what are some kind of specific situations where active listening really is important?

Paola Pascual 6:37
There’s many, if I think from a business perspective, when you have a demo with a potential client, you really want to actively listen, because that is going to help you really adapt your pitch to exactly what they want to or they need to hear. That’s a bit the more business you want. But obviously, when, when you get feedback, when there’s any feedback involved, it’s very important to be able to not only listen actively, but also show that you are actively listening…

Simon Kennell 7:08
Right, that you’re taking the feedback that you’re receiving seriously, and that you’re really considering it. I mean, I think about, especially when I was younger, if I was getting some type of review or something like that, you know, I would hear the good things. And I think this is pretty common that you hear the good things and you’re like, yeah, this is awesome. Great. And then you hear the bad things, you know, yeah. Okay, I’ll work on that. Cool. All right. Let’s continue. So yeah, this is where active listening definitely plays in. And then there are also barriers, right, there are barriers to things that would maybe make it more difficult for us to actively listen, right?

Paola Pascual 7:46
Yeah, one of them is distractions, we tend to be very distracted, and very inside of our heads with our own concerns with thinking we, you know, we all have internal issues. And I think you mentioned before that rather than active listening, we’re just getting ready to reply and thinking of what you’re going to say next. And then that is totally not the way.

Simon Kennell 8:16
I’m sure. Yeah, I’m sure we’ve all had conversations, where it’s just so clear that this person does not care about anything that I’m saying. They’re just, you know, they’re in their own little world. Right. And you’re just a prop in the room. Yeah, it comes back to what you said, right, interesting versus interested.

Paola Pascual 8:37
That’s it. And we all have, I guess, some prejudices and biases, and then what we think the other person means sometimes it’s not exactly what they meant. So it’s important, we’ll give some tips, tangible tips to improve our active listening, but one of them is going to be that like, come in with an open mind.

Simon Kennell 8:57
Right. I like that. Like that. And yeah, and of course, another one right is his attention span. And I think, you know, this comes more and more with using your phone, and I mean, multitasking. Yeah, yeah, it’s is it multitasking? Or is it just doing many things not as good as the one thing that you would be doing? And then, of course, why we’re here, right? The language barriers, right? There’s language barriers around active listening, and we’re going to give some tips around that, right?

Paola Pascual 9:32
Yes. So if active listening is hard, even if the two people involved, or all the people involved, speak the same language. But when one of them is not a native speaker, then it gets even more complicated. So that’s, I think a lot of the tips we’re going to give in just a moment will also help not negative, in this case, English speakers.

Simon Kennell 9:53
Right. Awesome. And let’s get to them. Let’s get to the tips.

Paola Pascual 9:56
Let’s do that.

Simon Kennell 9:57
How do we do Active listening? How do we do active listening? I think I can start with the first one, right? I think maybe the first step is unlearning a few things around this right? So, I, probably a lot of what we hear when we, when we hear active listening is, oh, it’s about the eye contact, and it’s about, you know, staring into their soul and, and mirroring the body. And, and, you know, and repeating back exactly what the person says, that’s a great thing. And if you do all these things, that’s they’re gonna love you, right. But I get the feeling that people can probably tell if you really considered what they said, right?

Paola Pascual 10:42
Yeah, I mean, what do you said also makes sense, I guess you can include it. Obviously, eye contact is important. repeating what the other person says sometimes can help you with a conversation or mirroring the body language of the other person. Those are all okay, tips, but I guess there’s so much more to it.

Simon Kennell 11:02
Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s just like most things, right? You know, there’s the kind of the layer at the top of these things that are good to do. But it doesn’t mean you’re doing the whole thing. Right? You know, you gotta get a little bit deeper here, which is, I think, a good thing. And of course, these nonverbal aspects like the, you know, the being neutral and non-judgmental, and being patient and called in communication is obviously a great first step. But we’re going to talk about what are the… maybe what are some of the tangible things that you can do right now as well, verbally, to really put yourself in a position to where you can actively listen. So what about the next one? That we’re coming to the rasa technique? Yeah,

Paola Pascual 11:55
this one is very interesting. I actually learned it from you, Simon, you gave a great, great, you hosted a great webinar on conflict resolution. Was that a couple of months ago?

Simon Kennell 12:05
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. seems like just yesterday, but yeah, a couple months ago.

Paola Pascual 12:09
That was awesome. It was really good. And you introduced the RASA technique to us. And I remember you said, R stands for Receive, A for Appreciate, S for Summarize, and A is Ask. So Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask. Did I get that right?

Simon Kennell 12:27
That’s right. That’s right. RASA literally means juice in Sanskrit.

Paola Pascual 12:34
Like orange juice?

Simon Kennell 12:37
Exactly. So we’re giving you the juice. No, that’s, that’s the way to remember it here. And yeah, so this is, you know, I, I came across this by a man named Julian Treasure. And if you have time, look him up. He has a lot of great work around this. But this technique, this RASA technique, the first step, right, Receive, this comes more into what we just talked about the nonverbal aspects, right. This is, your kind of body language, how you’re looking. Right. You know, obviously, if we’re receiving something we want to be neutral, nod non-judgmental, you know, taking in what the person is saying.

Paola Pascual 13:12
And allowing silence, right? This is something I learned… I used to be, I would say, a little bit more insecure before than I am now. And, for me, silence was a very awkward and uncomfortable thing. And when I learned that silence is okay, and that you can just let people talk and listen, and if there’s a second where no one’s talking, that’s also alright. I guess that’s not the way to receive what the other person is saying. Right?

Simon Kennell 13:40
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I applaud you for being that much…That further along in your journey than I am with that because maybe it’s where I’m at, in my American cultural background, where it’s difficult for me to deal with silence in a conversation. But I’m working on it. Uh… Appreciate – can you tell us a little bit about Appreciate? What do we mean, when we say that? The next step.

Paola Pascual 14:10
So the way I understand Appreciate is when you show them that you’re listening. It’s when you appreciate the message that’s coming through, perhaps with just a simple, like some “I see” or, “Oh,” “Yes,” or, “Okay”. Or even this… This is also a little bit American, that “Really?” when someone’s saying something?

Simon Kennell 14:35
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s just that little thing. shows that you’re actually listening. You’re appreciating what they’re saying. Just exactly what you just did right now, which I don’t even know if you noticed it, but you did. And I think okay, Paola actually is listening to what I’m saying. That’s so nice.

Paola Pascual 15:00
I’m definitely actively listening.

Simon Kennell 15:03
Next one, next one, we’re going to summarize.

Paola Pascual 15:07
Summarize, I think this is my favorite one. I work on this a lot with my students. And it’s when you paraphrase or summarize what the other person’s saying. And it’s not really about topping the conversation. It’s just about saying, all right, I listened to you, and this is how I understand things. So there’s some phrases we prepared here that people can use, for example, “Oh, it sounds like…”, and then you say, what the other or summarize what the person said. “So it sounds like…”, “In other words, what you’re saying is…”, or “Oh, so in a nutshell…” and then you can give the message or…

Simon Kennell 15:49
Sorry to cut you off. But if I say, if I give an example, like, you know, living in Denmark is really, really, really difficult in the, in the winter, but you know, in the summer, it’s like, it’s a different world, and people come out of their shell and everything is nice and bright. And, and it’s just like a completely different world. How would you reflect back on what I was saying there?

Paola Pascual 16:14
So one way to go about it could be “Oh, so it sounds like, although the winter is pretty harsh, when the summer comes, everyone’s happy, and it actually pays off.”

Simon Kennell 16:24
Yeah, exactly. Right. And for me, as your kind of conversation partner here that shows, okay, she, you, you really just took my words, and you internalize them and showed that you’re understanding everything that I’m saying. And then you’re providing it back to me in a way that I think, okay, yeah, you’re but you’re doing it in a different way. Because it’s from your perspective. And that really makes me feel listened to. Yeah. Which you did that really? Well. Very good.

Paola Pascual 16:55
Yeah, summarize is pretty cool. I like that as a conversation skill.

Simon Kennell 17:00
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then and then the last one, we’ll just get through, ask right. So we’ve, we’ve come through, receive, appreciate summarize, and now ask, and this is after you’re summarizing, you know, just like you just did asking, okay, so, you know, can you clarify about something right? Or so what do you mean, when you say this? Or is this what you mean, right? And kind of, this is what we’re doing, where we’re building on to the conversation, we’re adding kind of our layer, right? So even if you didn’t really understand it correctly, you could do something like I may not be understanding you exactly correctly. But when you said this, is that what you mean? Right? And so this is a good way to kind of clarify certain points, right?

Paola Pascual 17:48
Yes. And I think asking is great when you’re in the middle of a conversation, but it’s different. So one thing is – Ask questions, to clarify certain points or to encourage them, you know, to expand on on a specific topic, but it’s also important to not deviate the conversation. So if you feel like what you asked was totally off track, then make sure that you bring the conversation back on track. So for example, something like well, it was great to hear about Alice, you asked about Alice, but tell me more about your adventure in Disneyland.

Simon Kennell 18:29
Yeah. Yeah, so that’s just kind of off right off the way but you’re ensuring that you’re trying to get it back on track at some point, right.

Paola Pascual 18:40
That’s it. And if you didn’t need any qualifications, you can encourage all right, tell me more. Or and then what happened next? Or how did that make you feel? What do you think is the best way to handle the situation?

Simon Kennell 18:52
Nice, nice. So we have our roster technique, we have our Yeah, our method of how we can go about doing this. And of course, this is something we can practice. But there are also some everyday little things that you can do, which I came across, which I thought were pretty interesting. And I’d like to get your take on some of these. I mean, a few of them are focused around silence, right. So whether that be just sitting in silence, or you know, meditation, you know, and kind of dealing with the crazy, you know, a tornado of thoughts going on in your head, trying to sit in silence that helps. also trying to identify different sound channels. I thought this was an interesting one, identifying different sound channels in a crowded place. So if you’re sitting in a cafe, can you narrow in on one person’s conversation or narrow in on one sound right? Not to be the creepy person, you know, eavesdropping on other people’s conversations, but you get my point, right?

Paola Pascual 19:51
I do. Those are all very, very interesting, for sure. And I’m sure they will help. They’re hard nowadays with so much noise around us.

Simon Kennell 20:00
Yeah! Good, good, good, so good. So we have our RASA technique, we have our everyday kind of tips that we can work on. What else do we have?

Paola Pascual 20:10
So I, we, would put together a little list of like, Alright, here are some bullet points to remember while active listening. So as we said, focus on being interested, not interesting. Ask questions. One thing we didn’t mention is – look for commonalities. We like people who are similar to us. So find those things you have in common during a conversation.

Simon Kennell 20:35
I think we talked a little bit about this before and one of the other episodes, I can’t remember which one but that is a common thread in good communication, is finding commonality that then you can build on right?

Paola Pascual 20:47
That’s it. and tune in with all your attention. Leave your phone aside. Use your body language to nod. This is a way to receive the message or we serve from the RASA technique. Learn to paraphrase or summarize what the other person’s saying, Let go of your agenda. We talked about this in one of our I think it was in the small talk episode where a conversation is a bit like swinging doors, and sometimes you need to let the other person go through because there’s no point in pushing it because then no one actually gets through.

Simon Kennell 21:23
Right. Right. Yeah. That’s so good. That’s so true. Good, good. anything, any other tips that we have? I mean, I think, yeah, like we said, those are pretty good. Obviously, don’t interrupt. And yeah, give up the need to be right. Oof, that’s a good one. Yeah, that’s a whole other list of episodes. Okay, so so now we’re kind of wrapping it up here and getting into why this is important, not only just in basic communication and in your career, but also specifically within English learning, right. So, you know, this is critical to language learning. Especially when, with the RASA technique, we use that when we are in a conversation, and it gives us time when we are kind of paraphrasing, giving a best. So what you mean is, when we do that, we’re giving ourselves a little time to consider what was said. So a lot of times, if a conversation is moving too fast, that can be pretty intense. The rasa technique will help you kind of consciously get through what’s being said. And it makes it so that even if there’s different vocabulary, things going on, you’ll be able to kind of internalize the main points. Right. And yeah, of course, we’re always with Talaera, we’re trying to work with that. And build on that. And the summarizing as well with the RASA technique can help you even pick up new vocabulary and use, which, which I’ve been using and a little bit of my language learning as well. Yeah, so. And so, active listening, what are the big things? Paola, if you can kind of wrap this up for us? What are the big things we worked on today?

Paola Pascual 23:17
So just to super quickly summarize, active listening is a way of truly understanding what the other person is saying, taking that in, and showing that you’re also doing it and it can help you limit miscommunication, be more productive, build relationships with customers, and clients, and employees as well, receive feedback, improve negotiations and a bunch of other stuff we mentioned before.

Simon Kennell 23:48
All the good things.

Paola Pascual 23:49
Yes. And I want to say we’ve provided some tips like RASA techniques, the RASA technique and so on, but we are going to write a blog post about it. And we will provide so much more info on this topic.

Simon Kennell 24:03
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, we, of course, covered a lot of really good stuff today. And the blog posts from Talaera. I know, Paola, you’ve written a lot of those. I mean, those are great. And there’s so much good information on there, just like on the rest of our platform, you know, shameless plug. I’m just plugging, you know, the webinars, of course, that we have monthly, and then the blogs, there’s a lot of really good stuff to get into there. That’s going to help you Yeah, progress with your English. So I guess that is it for us today. The final week of our thesis. Whoo. All right. I will get back to writing I guess the same for you, Paula. Thanks for Yeah, thanks for meeting with me today.

Paola Pascual 24:51
Thank you so much, Simon. It was fun.

Simon Kennell 24:53
All right. Awesome. And to all of you out there as always, keep learning!

Outro:
And that’s all we have for you today. We hope you enjoyed it, and remember to subscribe to Talaera Talks. We’ll be back soon with more! And visit our website at https://talaera.com for more valuable content on business English. You can also request a free consultation on the best ways for you and your team to improve your communication skills. So have a great day and keep learning!

6:31
And that’s all we have for you today. We hope you enjoyed it, and remember to subscribe to Talaera Talks. We’ll be back soon with more! And visit our website at https://talaera.com for more valuable content on business English. You can also request a free consultation on the best ways for you and your team to improve your communication skills. So have a great day and keep learning!

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