Active listening exercises are a terrific way to enhance your active listening abilities while having fun. Active listening is both a natural ability and one that may be acquired.
Active Listening Exercises are crucial for good communication. If you are not a good listener, you cannot be a good communicator.
Active Listening Exercises are crucial in all facets of your life, including your personal and professional lives. According to research, active listening has numerous health benefits, including enhanced learning, enhanced memory, and the treatment of anxiety disorders, among others.
In this post, you will discover the definition of active listening, as well as examples and Active Listening Exercises.
What are Active Listening Skills?
Active listening is the process of intently listening and comprehending what another person is saying. This kind of listening allows the speaker to feel respected and heard.
Active listening is making a concerted effort to listen attentively and comprehend the speaker’s messages.
20 Active Listening Exercises
These 20 active listening exercises are organized into the following four categories:
- Make the speaker feel heard
- Listen to retain information
- Ask questions
- Pay attention to nonverbal cues.
Make the speaker feel heard 
Active Listening Exercises
Active listening focuses primarily on ensuring that the speaker feels heard. As an engaged listener, you must demonstrate undivided attention.
These active listening tasks will help you demonstrate your attentiveness to others’ communications.
1. Provide examples of your good and poor listening skills.
Active Listening Exercises
Nodding, smiling, maintaining eye contact, exhibiting empathy, etc., are all examples of good listening abilities.
Examples of poor listening skills include staring at a phone or watch, fidgeting, interrupting, rehearsing responses, etc.
This activity will highlight the talents to avoid and the skills to cultivate.
2. Request that someone relate old experiences
Active Listening Exercises
Ask at least two of your friends or family members to share a tale from their history. For instance, when the individual was hospitalized on their first day in college, etc.
When listening to the first person, make an effort to ask questions. Then, relate similar experiences while listening to the other individual.
Ask each speaker when they last felt valued and heard.
3. 3-minute vacation
In this activity, the speaker speaks for three minutes on their ideal holiday. The speaker must convey his or her vacation desires without specifying a specific location.
While the speaker is speaking, the listener is attentive and employs nonverbal signs to express interest in what is being said.
After three minutes, the listener must describe the most important aspects of the speaker’s ideal vacation and then determine the location.
The speaker then evaluates how well the audience understood what he/she said and required. In addition, the speaker examines the nonverbal signs of the listener.
4. Discuss a topic of broad interest with a friend.
Together with a friend, discuss a general topic. For instance, inflation
Each of you should alternate between speaking and listening. The listener should reiterate the speaker’s key points and offer a compliment when the speaker is through speaking.
5. Multiple-to-one versus One-to-one
Engage in a conversation with your pals in a group (at least 3). Permit only one person to speak at a time.
Then, have a talk with each of them individually. Ask when they felt the most heard. How important is the quantity of participants?
6. Restate the speaker’s words
Active Listening Exercises
Request that your acquaintance tell you about himself, including his favorite book and worst life experiences.
Maintain positive body language such as nodding and provide verbal affirmations such as “I agree,” “I understand,” etc. as he or she speaks.
Restate what your friend (the speaker) said when he or she has finished speaking. For instance, “I heard you mention your favorite musician is…”
Listen to retain information
Active Listening Exercises
Active listening goes beyond making the speaker feel heard and providing nonverbal cues. In addition, listeners must make an effort to recall what they hear.
7. Ask someone to narrate a tale
Request that someone read you a narrative and instruct them to ask you questions afterward.
Questions such as “what was the name of the character?” “Are you able to summarize the plot?” etc.
8. Who said that?
This practice in active listening consists of two parts:
Part 1: You and a friend should watch a movie or an episode of a television show. Listen to each conversation carefully.
Part 2: Request that your friend ask you questions based on what a specific character stated.
For example, which character stated that life is devoid of difficulties?
9. Read a fairy tale
Active Listening Exercises
If no one is available to tell you a story, read short storybooks that frequently include questions at the end of each chapter.
After reading each chapter, answer the questions and then return to the chapter to verify your answers.
10. Take Note
During presentations at school or on the job, take notes in your own words, i.e., paraphrase.
If you forget any of the speaker’s messages, you can always refer back to this note.
11. Play the “change-spotting” game.
Active Listening Exercises
This is an activity for two people. Request that your acquaintance read you a short narrative. Then he or she should reread it after making modifications.
Clap or raise your hand each time you hear a change to signal that there was a possibility.
12. Hold your questions
Encourage your pals to form a WhatsApp group. Give the group a specific topic to discuss.
All of your friends in the group should be administrators. You should be added to this group, but not as an administrator.
Before your friends begin discussing, you should adjust the group settings so that only administrators can send messages.
After they have finished explaining the issue, they may invite you to pose your questions.
Thus, you are compelled to wait to ask questions until they have finished speaking. There will be no opportunity for disruptions.
13. Read a long blog post
Active Listening Exercises
Try reading a lengthy article (at least 1,500 words). Pay close attention to this article you are reading.
Typically, article authors include questions at the conclusion of their work. Search for these questions and respond in the comments area.
Ask questions
Active Listening Exercises
Asking pertinent questions is essential to active listening. You can ask questions to clarify or acquire further information.
These exercises will assist you in posing pertinent questions at the right time.
14. Clarification vs No clarification
Active Listening Exercises
Request that your friend assign you an errand. For instance, assist me with my suitcase. Bring any bag with you without question.
Request that the same friend send you on another errand. For instance, assist me with my shoe. However, this time request clarity.
You may ask the following:
- Do you refer to your loafers or your sneakers?
- Is it the red footwear?
After completing these chores, inquire about your friend’s level of pleasure. Was it when you asked questions as opposed to when you did not?
This active listening activity highlights the need of requesting clarification in order to better comprehend a topic.
15. Play a drawing game
This is another exercise for two people. This practice can be performed with friends, siblings, and even parents.
Tell your friend (or anybody you choose as your partner) to obtain a sheet with various forms such as triangles, squares, etc.
You should acquire a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. You and your companion should then sit back-to-back.
Request that your friend discuss the shapes with him. Then, create the shapes based on your friend’s responses.
Finally, both sheets should be compared to determine whether the drawing was precisely copied.
This exercise will demonstrate the significance of asking the appropriate questions in order to obtain the required information.
16. Three Motives
Active Listening Exercises
This exercise requires two individuals: a speaker and an audience member.
A minute would be spent discussing any topic of interest to the speaker. The listener must then pay great attention to what the speaker is saying and be able to inquire “why?”
These questions were not addressed by the presenter during their minute-long speech. The objective is to identify questions that the speaker has not addressed.
This practice will teach you how to ask pertinent questions that will yield further information.
Pay attention to nonverbal cues
Active Listening Exercises
Nonverbal clues have the capacity to convey millions of words. Always be conscious of your nonverbal signs and those of the speaker during conversations.
These activities in active listening will teach you the importance of noticing nonverbal signs.
17. Communicate with an absent listener
This is a two-person activity in which the speaker discusses a subject they are enthusiastic about. The speaker should make extensive use of nonverbal clues, such as facial expressions and hand gestures.
Unknown to the speaker, the listener should be encouraged to demonstrate disinterest through nonverbal indicators such as staring at a phone, yawning, gazing about the room, leaning back, etc.
There will be a change in the body language of the speaker. The speaker will become extremely irritated and agitated.
This exercise illustrates the significance of a listener’s nonverbal clues to the speaker.
18. Imitate it
This is an activity for two people. Give someone, perhaps a coworker or friend, a tale to read.
Your companion should spend approximately five minutes reading the story and coming up with expressions that he or she believes are acceptable to describe it.
At the conclusion of five minutes, instruct your companion to recount the story using nonverbal signals. You must interpret these nonverbal signs and explain the story to your companion.
This practice will assist you in developing an awareness of nonverbal signs. Additionally, you will learn to interpret nonverbal cues.
19. Attend without uttering a sound
Active Listening Exercises
Ask someone to give you a tale about their life, such as their most recent birthday celebration.
Listen without speaking and provide only nonverbal cues. Ask the individual whether your nonverbal cues are encouraging.
20. Guess the Picture
Active Listening Exercises
For this activity, you must form a team (at least 4 people). The team selects one individual to examine an image and describe it with hand gestures and other nonverbal cues.
This individual will be facing the image, while other team members will not. Using nonverbal cues, the remaining team members attempt to guess the name of the described image.
Play this game multiple times and switch roles with your teammates. This practice will instruct you on how to understand nonverbal cues.
FAQs About Active Listening Exercises
What are the 3 A's of active listening?
Listening is a conscious activity based on three basic skills: attitude, attention, and adjustment. These skills are known collectively as triple-A listening. A positive attitude paves the way for open-mindedness. Don't assume from the outset that a lecture is going to be dull.
What are 5 qualities of a good listener?
Listens without distractions.
Keeps eyes on the speaker to communicate interest.
Concentrates on what's being said.
Doesn't pre-judge the message(s)
Avoids interrupting.
How can I improve my active listening skills at work?
Always look at the speaker and maintain eye contact. ...
Use positive body language. ...
Observe the speaker's body language. ...
Really listen to what's being said. ...
Don't interrupt the speaker. ...
Wait for pauses in the conversation to ask questions or make comments.
Conclusion
The aforementioned active listening abilities can enhance your capacity to listen actively.
Explore our post on active listening if you wish to enhance your listening skills. You will acquire life-changing active listening abilities.