Empathetic listening is understanding the person who’s talking to you.

That
means it goes beyond active listening and deep into the zone of non-judging and
empathy. Non-judgment while you listen to others means you can truly hear them
with an open mind. Empathy refers to emotionally connecting with another person
through identification, compassion, understanding, feeling, and insight. Empathetic
listening is needed most when someone needs to be seen and heard, and are not
particularly coming to you for a solution.

Empathetic listening is hard to do. It means getting over ourselves, our needs,
our opinions, and essentially our attachment to ‘I’. Here are some tips that can help
to improve empathetic listening.

 Create a safe space for the person/s who needs to talk.

 Pay attention to body language. Use attentive posture, comfortable eye
contact, and gestures, expressions, and intensity that match the speaker’s.
 Use thoughtful, open-ended, empathic questions to invite deeper thought
and consideration: “What were you feeling when that happened?”
 Remind yourself that respectful empathetic listening is a gift you may give,
and it does not mean “I agree with you”
 When the speaker pauses, you can briefly summaries what you heard in
your own words, without solutions (this is the hardest part). When you need
to say something: introject, don’t interrupt.