Active Listening at Work Isn’t Enough. It’s Time to Adapt.

If someone were to ask you, “Which is better in the workplace: active listening or passive listening?” you’d undoubtedly answer “active!” Most people recognize the inherent definition of these listening types. Passive listening is one-way communication where the listener avoids giving feedback or asking questions, and may or may not understand the speaker’s message.

Like when your colleague continues to type on their laptop while you’re telling a harrowing work woe, or when your direct report says “mm-hmm” here and there while you’re speaking, but maintains a blank facial expression – you can tell nothing’s getting through. At its core, passive listening is synonymous with not paying attention. If you’re looking to make a good impression at work, passive listening is probably not the way to go, regardless of your industry, title, or role.

What is Active Listening?

Active listening is making a genuine effort to understand what someone is saying, and showing them you’re engaged while they say it. They’re alert, attentive, and engaged. The three components of active listening typically include:

• Showing you’re listening, both verbally and non-verbally by nodding your head, for example, or making eye contact with the person speaking.
• Providing feedback and ask questions when appropriate, like, “Tell me more about that,” or “Why do you think that is?”
• Paying attention by shutting off notifications on your laptop or putting away your phone.

Smart techniques in the workplace, and kind of a no-brainer, right? Sure.

That’s why, over the years, active listening has become synonymous with good listening. Some organizations have even attempted to incorporate active listening exercises into their learning and development efforts, and that makes sense. If given the choice between passive listening and active listening, active wins, no contest. But what if there was an even better way to listen at work?

Active Listening Techniques

Want to sharpen how you listen? These are the active listening techniques that show up most at work:

• Paraphrase what you heard, so the speaker knows you got it right.
• Ask open questions like “Tell me more about that” to draw people out.
• Use nonverbal cues, eye contact, a nod, an open posture, to show you’re with them.
• Summarize the key points before you move the conversation forward.
• Put the phone down and close the laptop so your attention is undivided.

These techniques are a strong foundation. Adaptive Listening helps you know which ones to reach for, and when.

Active Listening Exercises

Want to practice as a team? Try these quick active listening exercises:

• The playback drill: one person shares a two-minute update, and the other paraphrases it back before responding.
• The no-interruption round: in your next meeting, let each person finish completely before anyone replies.
• The question-only conversation: respond only with questions for five minutes to practice drawing people out.

Run them in a team meeting or a one-on-one to build the habit.

Where Active Listening Falls Short

With 30+ years of combined experience as communication professionals, my co-creator, Maegan Stephens, and I set out on a mission to develop a model for listening that (unlike active listening) is:

• Purpose-built for the workplace
• Accounts for a fast-paced, results-driven workday
• Considers the nuances of a distributed workforce

After three years of research, hundreds of interviews, and dozens of focus groups and testing in U.S.-based business contexts, we developed a new model for great listening: Adaptive Listening™.

What is Adaptive Listening™?

Put simply, Adaptive Listening™ is processing and responding in a way that meets the speaker’s goals during the interaction. To break down that definition,

• Processing = what you think while you’re listening
• Responding = what you say and show in response
• Speaker = the person speaking to you
• Goals = what the speaker needs from the interaction
• Interaction = the moment you are listening

Adaptive Listening™ challenges, and improves upon, many of active listening’s principles including: avoid judgement, avoid jumping to conclusions, and provide feedback and ask questions, to name a few. While those principles hold true in some workplace situations, they’re simply not appropriate in all environments or with all speakers.

3 Big Differences Between Active Listening vs. Adaptive Listening™

Here’s a deeper dive into some of the differences between active listening and Adaptive Listening™:

Active listening vs. Adaptive Listening™: Judgement and advice

You might be surprised to learn that active listening was created as a helpful tool for people who listen in a therapeutic setting. Psychologists Carl R. Rogers and Richard Evans Farson published the book Active Listening in the 1950s. As therapists, they wanted to know why some counselors were better than others at addressing their clients’ problems. They found that counselors who listened for “total meaning” across both the patient’s content and feelings had better results than counselors who judged or gave advice.

But outside the therapeutic setting, judgement and advice is often warranted. Across roles and industries, there are situations at work where people are asked to assess, critique, and poke holes in the information. In fact, Duarte Executive Speaker Coaches have made careers out of judging other people’s communication skills and deliverables. We listen to clients and tell them when and how:

• Their presentation is unclear
• Their messages are redundant
• Their delivery skills are distracting

There’s a time and place to evaluate information. And there’s also a time and a place to offer advice. How many times has an executive or senior leader asked for your opinion based on your expertise? Or think about the last time a direct report came to you, confused about how to proceed on their latest project, and you told them exactly how to move forward. You’ve likely had a colleague come to you with an interpersonal work-related issue where they sought your guidance. Sometimes the people you work with need your advice.

In a nutshell

• Where active listening says: “Avoid judgement and advice.”
• Adaptive Listening™ says: “In the workplace, sometimes colleagues need your evaluation, critique or guidance.”

With Adaptive Listening™ skills, you’ll be able to determine, not only when it’s appropriate to provide your evaluation, guidance, and criticisms, but with whom and how.

Active listening vs. Adaptive Listening™: Jumping to Conclusions

Active listening also posits that you should “avoid jumping to conclusions.” In the therapeutic context, this guidance makes perfect sense. Counselors and therapists work to give patients time to process information aloud without interruption.

On the contrary, Adaptive Listening™ asks listeners to determine whether the person speaking needs a conclusion jump. Because sometimes they do! In the workplace, jumping to conclusions or interrupting the person speaking might send a message that you’re on the same page. And sometimes, like in agile working sessions or fast-moving brainstorms, that’s precisely what the situation demands.

Can interruptions be a distraction or off-putting? Of course. But when you and a colleague are in a forward-moving rhythm, it might be more efficient and helpful to finish each other’s sentences in the name of progress.

In a nutshell

• Where active listening says: “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
• Adaptive Listening™ says: “Sometimes the person speaking needs you to jump to conclusions for the sake of momentum and drive.”

As an Adaptive Listener, you’ll not only recognize when it’s appropriate to jump to conclusions, you’ll know what to say and how to say it, so those interruptions feel productive, not disruptive.

It’s Time for Adaptive Listening™

To be sure, active listening has made valuable contributions to the therapeutic setting and broader communication contexts. But it doesn’t fully account for the intricacies of your workday. But, if you’re someone who has found success with active listening exercises and techniques, keep using them! Just make sure you add Adaptive Listening™ techniques so you can confidently know when, why, and how to make judgements, give advice, jump to conclusions, ask questions, and give feedback. Want to see what strong listening looks like across every workplace conversation? Read our guide to effective listening skills.

For more information on the difference between active listening and Adaptive Listening™, read our book Adaptive Listening™: How to Cultivate Trust and Traction at Work. And if you’re ready to become an Adaptive Listener, sign up for Duarte’s Adaptive Listening™ workshop. In it you’ll learn about your own listening preferences and goals, how to mitigate barriers that may get in your way of listening to others, how to identify the other person’s goals, and most importantly, how to adapt the way you listen so you can help them meet those goals. When active listening falls short, Adaptive Listening™ might be the solution you didn’t even know you needed.

Active Listening FAQs

What is active listening?

Active listening is making a real effort to understand what someone is saying, then showing it. At work, that means giving the speaker your full attention, reflecting back what you heard, and asking questions to go deeper. It’s a solid baseline for any conversation with a colleague, manager, or direct report.

What are the components of active listening?

Active listening usually comes down to three things: showing you’re listening through nonverbal cues like eye contact and nodding, giving feedback and asking questions like “tell me more,” and paying full attention by silencing notifications and putting your phone away.

What is the difference between active listening and Adaptive Listening?

Active listening focuses on attention and understanding, and it works the same way in every conversation. Adaptive Listening adds a step: it asks what the speaker actually needs from you in that moment, then adjusts how you respond. Active listening is the foundation, and Adaptive Listening makes it fit the realities of a busy workplace.

What are some active listening exercises?

Try the playback drill, where one person shares an update and the other paraphrases it back before responding. Or run a no-interruption round in your next meeting, letting each person finish before anyone replies. Both build the habit of listening fully before you jump in.