Last summer, my family and I had the opportunity to go on a safari in Tanzania.  While driving in a Toyota Land Cruiser around the Serengeti, our outstanding driver / tour guide would be in the front seat describing what we were seeing and giving us fascinating background information.  In the back seats, we were all listening intently, but quietly.  After a while, he started to speak less.  I then realized that we had to ask questions, and we needed to signal that we were listening with words like “interesting”, “yeah”, “I see” and so forth.  In short, we had to ‘listen out loud’ to ensure that he knew that we were interested and listening.

Much has been written about the need to be an active listener.  The predominant piece of advice is to give our full attention, avoiding multitasking and distraction while maintaining eye contact and not interrupting.  Good advice, but not good enough.

We also need to interact verbally with the speaker with encouraging language such as “OK”, “uh-huh”, “yes”, and (when appropriate) paraphrasing and summarizing what the speaker has said – “so what you mean is” or “in short, you are saying that”. 

This level of interaction is vital to signal to the speaker that you are actively listening and engaged in what is being said.  Quiet, passive ‘active listening’ gives no such clues and is interpreted (especially in a one speaker – multiple listener environment) as inattention.

So, we would all do well to become better verbal listeners and listen out loud.

Those inconspicuous ‘uh-huhs’ and ‘yeahs’ and ‘hmms’ and ‘ohs’ that pepper our speech perform distinct, precise roles in regulating the flow of information from speaker to listener – both its rate and level of detail.  While some people may be worse than others, ‘bad storytellers’ can at least partly blame their audience.  (As quoted by Brian Christian)