Voices for Change

Let’s talk about Stephen Covey’s 5 Levels of Listening and why they matter.

Because let’s be honest—you’ve been all five of these at some point. (Don’t lie, your brain scrolled past half of this post already.)

Which One Have you Been the last Few Days? 

Ignoring: The “Sorry, were you talking?” level. You hear zero words because you’re too busy texting, preoccupied with scrolling, distracted with your own thoughts and planning your next meal.

Pretend Listening: The "nod-and-smile" approach. You look engaged, but in reality, you're mentally composing your grocery list, deciding what show you're going to binge-watch tonight, and planning how to escape that family gathering this weekend. There may be some body language that could appear exaggerated by the speaker, and your interruptions make it clear you don't care.

Selective Listening: You're nodding your head and making gestures to show that you understand and agree. However, you're only hearing the bits and parts that interest you. You tune out anything boring but snap back in when something directly benefits you. The parts that matter in the conversation are the ones that feed your ego, are in alignment with your beliefs, and anything that differs is tuned out. Any engagement of yours is charged with your own opinions, views, complaints, and blame from your experience, leaving the speaker confused.

Attentive Listening: Surface-level focus! You hear what’s being said, but you’re still waiting for your turn to talk, share your own experiences and stories. There's a surface level of understanding; you could even recite words, phrases, and a few sentences that were said verbatim. This is just the tip of the iceberg, where there's more depth and richness below the waterline that's not seen with this level of listening.

Empathetic Listening: The Jedi Master of listening. You actually care about understanding the message and more. You hold dear to your heart a desire and value the important to understand what's below the waterline of the iceberg. You recognize the power of truly listening, not just hearing the words spoken but also understanding the emotions, intentions, and unspoken truths behind them. Your genuine curiosity and desire to truly comprehend the meaning behind the words spoken by the speaker make you a valuable ally and confidant, opening up a rich conversation that builds trust between the two of you. Your dedication and determination to understanding the deeper layers of communication allow you to forge strong and meaningful relationships built on goodwill and a willingness to learn from another person's views, perspective, and experience. We all have our own unique lives and anyone can teach us something new. We have to be open to it and practice empathic listening.

Moral of the story? The better you listen, the more you learn, connect, and open doors to opportunities you never saw coming. Plus, your brain gets trained to focus on something longer than a Instagram reel or a TikTok video.

Challenge: Pay attention to which level you default to this week. Because real listening? What's going to support you in being intentional and listening at a deeper level and would you report back what you learn?