Team Building Activities to Learn to Listen at Work. Active Listening

Active Listening

Being able to communicate well is more than knowing how to speak or express yourself correctly. Knowing how to listen to the other person is 50% of a conversation's success, of good communication. Unfortunately, not all of us naturally have that skill. But we can learn it. Team Building activities can be a great help for working on active listening.

If we bring all this into the context of a company, of teamwork, it becomes even more essential to boost this listening skill, since it won't just help us build better relationships with the rest of the team, colleagues, our superiors or bosses — it will also help us be more effective and get better results from our work (both individual and team-based).

How can we learn to listen? Are there any tricks? How do these team building activities help? We'll try to answer all these questions in this post. Let's start with some key tips experts and coaches (like Christopher Barquero) recommend:

5 keys to learning to listen

1.- Attention, please! Staying attentive to what others say is the first step. If, during a meeting, while we're supposedly listening, we're on our phone chatting, looking out the window, or jotting something in our notebook, we're not paying the attention needed to listen and understand everything others are saying. Always try to look the speaker in the eye — this will help you focus on what they're saying. You might agree, you might not. But without a doubt, the first step is letting the other person speak and focusing our attention on what they're saying.

2.- Talk less, listen more. For many people, it's easier to talk than to listen to someone else in a work environment (and possibly on a personal level too). But logically, there should be a balance between the time you spend talking and the time you devote to listening to others. In a work meeting, you need to take part and share your opinion, your ideas... but it's just as important to let the rest of the team speak, share their opinions, and take part. Only this way do you get the best results. Only this way do you get the best teamwork.

3.- A relaxed atmosphere, with no interruptions. There's no doubt that if a conversation between 2 or more people takes place in a relaxed, calm atmosphere, where speaking turns are respected, where every participant is heard... the result will be much better than if it happens in a tense environment. If we also manage not to interrupt whoever is speaking, they'll feel that what they're saying is interesting to the rest, and feel more valued and confident to speak.

4.- Use body language. Our gestures help us enormously when relating to others. Showing the other person, through gestures, that we agree, that we understand what they're saying, etc. creates an atmosphere of connection and understanding that fosters communication. Nodding when the other person speaks, smiling... in short, we should express interest in what the other person is saying. And our body and gestures can be a great help with that.

5.- Rephrase, reflect, summarise... This is about showing the other person that the message got through, that we've understood their idea, their proposal, their explanation... To do this, we can emphasise the most relevant points of what they said using phrases like "if I understood correctly, your idea is..." or "based on what you're proposing, the solution would be...". What's more, if after the other person's explanation you're able to share your own thoughts on the topic or summarise its key points to make sure you've understood everything correctly, you'll also show that you've been paying attention, listening, analysing, reflecting... that it held your interest.

Team Building activities that can help you

Which activities can help us work on our listening skills? Two we recommend to our clients in this regard are:

In Tune with the Team (or Cohesion Team Building)

A Team Building activity that specifically works on listening and group cohesion through percussion instruments. If we're able to play to the same beat, it means we're listening to each other, reinforcing our sense of belonging to a team. It's about experiencing the strength of the group when it works as one. A motivating, unifying corporate event, especially recommended when the goal is to strengthen bonds between a work team's members.

Defuse the Bomb (an original Team Building activity)

In a calm meeting or conference room, (fictional) terrorists unexpectedly burst in, claiming a bomb will explode soon unless they manage to stop it. Undoubtedly one of the most original and striking team building activities, requiring communication and participation between the different teams to reach the shared goal: defusing the bomb in time. An activity that requires no physical effort, but plenty of communication and listening to the different ideas and proposals from each team's participants, in order to try to solve the problem together.

As experts in corporate activities and Team Building in Madrid and Barcelona, we know how important a united team is — one that listens, knows and respects each other. But this doesn't always come naturally, which is why reinforcing it with certain guidelines, exercises and team building activities is always a good idea. Shall we put it into practice? ;)