AARP Hearing Center
Want to improve your listening skills? Read on to learn what works — and what doesn't.
Sam Island
Key takeaways
- Listening improves when you manage your mental noise, ego and energy before focusing on others.
- Asking follow-up questions, validating emotions and allowing for silence deepens understanding and trust.
- Body language, being open-minded and respecting different communication styles shape how people perceive being heard.
The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus once said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
Sounds simple enough, but listening well is anything but simple — especially as we age.
“The human mind was built to wander, so listening attentively takes a tremendous amount of cognitive effort,” says Alison Wood Brooks, a behavioral research scientist and an associate professor at Harvard Business School.
And we’re really good at faking it. One 2024 research study found that even though people’s minds wandered away from a conversation 24 percent of the time, those speaking often believed they were being heard even when they weren’t.
Other research on active listening makes clear that the ability to communicate is not innate but a learned skill that requires ongoing practice, no matter what stage of life you're in.
Ready to work on it? Here are 25 ways to become a more thoughtful, attentive conversation partner.
25 Great Ways
Smart ideas for a brighter life, delivered in an easy-to-read format.
1. Check in with yourself first
“You can’t effectively listen to others if you can’t hear yourself,” says Camille Preston, a business psychologist and professional certified coach in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Immediately before you get into a conversation, notice all the thoughts running through your head — the internal chatter, anxieties, to-do lists. “Acknowledging them so you can set them aside and be fully present for someone else is really key,” Preston says.
When you’re preparing for a difficult discussion with someone, and you have a strongly held opinion that makes it challenging to listen to an opposing viewpoint, it’s a good idea to prepare for it by practicing mindfulness. Here’s what Sabrina Vogler, 53, an intuitive-mindfulness coach, executive coach and grief specialist in Asheville, North Carolina, does before one of those challenging conversations: She journals on her computer using two different fonts. In the first font, she describes how she feels. After switching to italics, she writes the response she wishes to receive. By the end of the exercise, Vogler says she feels “really, really heard and accepted,” and she can better show up for a conversation with someone who feels much differently.
2. Start with a blank page
Listening is an art, so think of an artist with an empty canvas and a color palette. “Begin the conversation with no preconceived notions — almost like in a state of amnesia,” says Vogler.
The next step is to build on what happens as information unfolds. “As the different colors are added to the page,” she says, continuing the metaphor, “you can experiment and notice: What colors are blending together beautifully? Where is one color too thick? And where do I need to thin the paint?”
3. Suspend your ego
Do it at least long enough to “zero out your own agenda to create an open space for the other person to fill,” says Preston. This technique emphasizes problem-solving over pride.
While she first learned of this as a coaching concept, Preston says it makes sense in any conversation: “Are you listening to understand the other individual, or are you listening to argue your own points of view?”
4. Listen for what is unsaid
This is Vogler’s favorite listening technique. She says the brain’s left temporal lobe listens for what’s actually being said, while the right temporal lobe listens for what’s just beneath the surface. This is how we understand metaphors and the connections between two things that seem to have nothing in common. (Vogler says she learned about this from reading The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain, written by cognitive neuroscientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman.)
According to Vogler, research shows that when the right temporal lobe is activated, you can sometimes discern what someone “can’t say because they’re not ready to say it,” she says. “That form of listening is the most profoundly healing. Our brains are wired for ‘Can I, or can I not, trust in this moment?’ And people can sense when you’re listening on a level that is that deep.”
Don't ask someone a question as a gambit to talk about yourself. That's “boomerasking.”
Sam Island
5. Don’t ‘boomerask’
Boomerasking is when someone asks a question (“How was your weekend?”), lets another person answer, then answers the same question without being asked (“Mine was amazing!”).
“Like a boomerang, the question returns quickly to its source,” reports a 2025 article in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General that Brooks cowrote.
This is different than ping-ponging in a conversation — maintaining a healthy, back-and-forth rhythm.
If you’re eager to share something about yourself, it’s better to do it directly. Otherwise, you’re only feigning interest, and “people see through that,” says Brooks. “It makes them feel like you weren’t interested to begin with.”
6. Avoid minimizing their experience
It doesn’t matter if you think that what someone else is going through is no big deal. If they’re telling you it is, then it is — for them. And your job as an active listener, says Vogler, is to ask questions such as “What’s the hardest part?” or “What’s the best outcome you can see happening?”
“Those questions can be extremely helpful because it teaches the person that you trust them and have faith in them to speak from their own experience,” she says. “And there’s no substitute.”
Aside from minimizing, steer clear of exaggerating or overidentifying with their experience, Vogler adds.
7. Manage your ‘listening bandwidth’
Cognitive capacity is a finite resource, particularly if hunger, anger, loneliness or fatigue are in the mix, says Preston.
But just as important is having the ability to be fully present even if those things aren’t factors. Preston shares a common exchange she has with her husband: She’s doing creative work at home when he “bursts” into her office to ask for feedback on a spreadsheet or another topic, requiring her to shift gears on the spot.
Setting boundaries is important, as is effectively communicating when you’ll be available to hold space for another person.
“Listening is bi-directional,” she says. “You want me to listen? OK, let’s make this work.”
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