Social skills are essential to successfully communicate with our environment and relate to those we encounter daily, both personally and professionally.
However, not all of them have to do with expressing our ideas and opinions well and also interpreting what we are told; It is necessary to go further and establish a certain emotional connection so that, in this way, we can not be limited by the literality of what is said, and focus on people’s real interests.
In this sense, empathetic listening is very important, since it is more complete than simple active listening and allows us to perform better in situations of negotiation, persuasion, conflict resolution, and even in raising our children. We see what it consists of.
Social skills are learned as we develop during childhood and adolescence, so that most adults are equipped with them and use them in their daily lives. However, these can be expanded and developed further at practically any time in life. And although most people naturally acquire these important skills in society, some people may have problems both acquiring them and differentiating them
The main social skills that exist are empathic listening, active listening, assertiveness, emotional management in conflict situations, the ability to identify insults or affronts, and critical thinking in ambiguous interactions.
In today’s article we will focus on the concepts of empathic listening and active listening, two very similar and important skills that can often be confused with each other.
Differences between empathic listening and active listening
Empathy can be defined as the ability to put ourselves in the other’s shoes, that is, to identify and understand at all times what type of thoughts occupy the mind of our interlocutor, what they feel, and also your preferences, ideas or needs
When talking about empathic listening and active listening as very necessary skills in any job that is performed in front of the public or as necessary tools for daily life, these two concepts tend to be confused.
In this sense, coaching professionals are specialists in working and training each of these terms in any person who requests it, since as we have said, some of these skills are not acquired naturally in some people.
Thus, active listening consists of attend openly and consciously to what our interlocutor says and react in real time according to the tone and importance of what emerges in your speech, and is essential for any interaction to be successful, whether with family, friends, co-workers or superiors in the workplace.
On the contrary, empathic listening incorporates the component of empathy into the ability to listen, and with it we can be able to understand the emotional and intellectual universe of the other person to the point of putting ourselves in their shoes.
Therefore, while active listening shows that we are listening to the other person, empathic listening shows that we understand how our interlocutor thinks, how they feel and what needs or problems they may have internally.
The key to the differentiation between concepts is that empathic listening allows us to put ourselves in the place of the other and thanks to that we manage to establish much stronger emotional and intellectual bonds by expressing that we are making an effort to predict what the person we are talking to thinks and needs.
With empathic listening we can quickly study and successfully analyze what we have been told to draw accurate conclusions about the state in which that person is at the present moment.
In addition to that, it is a very useful skill to persuade, negotiate or intervene as professional and quality coaches or psychotherapists.
The importance of connecting with the mental model of others
As we have seen, empathic listening involves taking a step beyond active listening and establishing not only an intellectual, but also an emotional connection with the interlocutor. This has a reason: It allows, among other things, to adapt to your needs, values ​​and expectations and better understand how you will react according to what we tell you something essential to communicate assertively, persuade or even resolve conflicts.
That is why developing the capacity for empathetic listening also involves training a set of very important social skills both in the professional field and in private life. In this sense, a good part of the coaching support services have among their main objectives helping people to relate from the mental model of the interlocutor.
