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Active Listening Exercises: 10
Team Activities to Improve
Active Listening
Active listening exercises are a great opportunity to
both break the ice and have some fun, whilst learning
vital skills to develop effective listening. After all, human
beings are social animals and communication is the
very basis of human socialisation.
Communication involves understanding and
empathising with the speaker with the goal being
brevity and crystal clear points of view and direction.
This is why active listening gains a great importance in
the process of communication.
In this article, we have identified 10 active listening
exercises which you can play with your teams, to help
naturally improve effective listening.
For a deeper understanding in active listening, check
out our guides on how to be a great active listener,
and also the one golden rule of active listening.
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Active Listening Exercises to
Develop Active Listening Skills in
Your Team
Here are a few activities that you can take up within
your team to cultivate the practice of active listening
and improve communication effectiveness.
Mime it Out
This is the first of the 10 active listening exercises. It’s
played as an individual activity. Each person in the
group is given a topic and 5 minutes to brainstorm on
their own. They must come up with the emotions and
expressions that they feel are appropriate to describe
the topic.
At the end of the 5 minutes, each person takes the
stage and acts out the given topic as a mime. The others
have to understand the expression and tell that person
what topic is being described.
Objectives:
This helps the participant develop an
understanding of non-verbal cues from the
speaker;
This also helps the participants to express
themselves using expressions and body language;
It creates awareness about possible areas of
misunderstanding while reading non-verbal cues.
Omit the Obvious
In this activity, give a set of words to your group of
participants. These words should be closely related to a
certain topic. Purposefully repeat a few of the words
multiple times, while omitting a certain obvious word in
the group.
For instance, under the topic of Space, you can give the
following set of words: Sun, comets, asteroids, dark
matter, planets and black hole. Out of these, you can
repeat the words planets and comets 2-3 times. You
might notice that we have left out the obvious word –
Stars.
Once you are done reciting the words, take a gap of 5
minutes to discuss some unrelated topic. Then, ask the
participants to indicate which word was on the list and
which was not, as you read out that list of words.
You will notice that many would invariably mark “Stars”
to be on the list. Also, the majority of the people are
expected to remember the words that were repeated.
Objectives:
This activity displays the importance of attentive
listening for retaining information;
It also shows how repetition helps to reinforce the
memory.
Listen, Listen, Listen
The third of the active listening exercise, and for this
activity, divide the team into groups of two.
Each person in their respective group must talk about
something that is important to them, for a period of 3-4
minutes.
The other person cannot speak during this time. They
have to listen quietly.
At the end of the speaking time, the listener has to
paraphrase what the speaker said, in their own words.
The speaker then clarifies, corrects or confirms what
the listener paraphrased.
Objectives:
This activity helps to build patience. It reinforces
the skill of not interrupting while someone is
speaking;
This also helps to boost reflective capabilities. It
trains the participants to stop thinking about what
they would say next and instead focus on what the
speaker is saying.
The Absent Minded Listener
This is also a two person activity, where one person
speaks about something they are passionate about. The
speaker should use plenty of non verbal cues –
expressions, hand gestures etc.
The other person, unbeknownst to the speaker, should
be instructed to feign disinterest and be fidgety. They
should repeatedly look at their watch, look around the
room, give bored expressions and a laid back posture.
The change in the speaker’s body language and
eagerness is to be noticed. While starting off with a high
energy, the expressions and hand gestures would soon
come down, seeing the lack of interest of the listener.
Objectives:
This activity shows the importance of a positive
body language from the listener in order to elicit an
eager and earnest conversation from the speaker;
Point to be driven home is that if the listener is in
the shoes of the speaker, the same would happen
to him or her.
This activity should then be repeated, but this time with
active participation from the listener in terms of
maintaining eye contact, questions, clarifications,
paraphrasing and an overall positive body language.
The marked difference in the quality of communication
can be easily observed.
Sandwiches and Hamburgers
This is a group activity involving all the members of the
team. Make everyone stand in a circle with you at the
centre. Give them two verbal cues – Sandwiches and
Hamburgers.
Also give them two corresponding actions. This can be
raising the right hand for sandwiches and the left hand
for hamburgers.
Now, say the verbal cue out aloud, accompanied by the
corresponding action. Ask everyone to follow your
words.
For the first few rounds, do it correctly. Raise the right
hand for sandwiches and the left hand for hamburgers.
Then, start mixing them up.
This game can be a lot of fun, with people misjudging
the verbal cues and the actions, leading to some good
hearted laugh.
Objectives:
To teach the participants to listen carefully. Even
though your actions contradict your verbal cues,
they were expressly instructed to follow your
words…and not your actions;
To act as a good ice breaker at the beginning of a
long session or in between two intensive sessions.
A Drawing Task
This again, is a two person activity.
Divide the team into groups of two. Make the two
members of each group sit back to back. Give a sheet
containing a simple drawing, such as a mix of various
shapes, to one person, without showing it to the other.
The person without the sheets gets a blank paper and a
pencil to draw. They then have to ask questions and
draw what they believe they are hearing, based on the
answers from their partner.
Finally, both the sheets are compared to see how
accurately the drawing has been replicated.
Objectives:
To teach the importance of seeking clarifications to
improve one’s understanding of the subject;
To show the importance of framing and asking the
right questions to gain the necessary information.
Respecting Pluralism
This can be taken up as a group activity, but it
essentially involves two people. They should ideally
have opposing points of view on a given subject.
If we commence talking about software development
strategies employing a comparable way of framing
questions can be worthwhile.
But it is also particularly fruitful when examining the
merits and concerns related to software development
outsourcing services.
The Objective is for each person to listen to the other’s
views with patience and respect. They should also try to
gain insights into and genuinely understand the reasons
behind the opposing point-of-view and how they came
to settle upon it.
The entire activity should be in the form of a friendly
conversation without any argument or confrontation.
Objectives:
To create a habit of patient and unbiased listening,
even when the speaker holds markedly different
views from those of the listener;
To strengthen the skill of gaining deeper
understanding of a certain subject by asking
relevant questions;
To improve the capability of having fruitful
conversations with people of contrasting views.
Respecting Pluralism (Alternative
Method)
This is an active listening exercise that is subtly different
from exercise 7. In case sufficient alternative viewpoints
are not available in the original game above, you can
take up a modified version of this activity:
For each group, Provide a topic to start the
conversation. One person expresses their views on the
topic, while the other person tries to glean more
information about why they hold those views.
This is to be done by asking a WHY question after every
response. Repeat this 3 times.
The questions should be soft and meant to bring out
more information, rather than to badger the opposite
party into changing his views.
For instance, the topic can be “Do you think the present
Government is doing a good job of managing the
economy?”
Relive your emotions
This a self development activity, meant to be practiced
in a calm and composed state of mind.
Find a quiet place for this activity. Reflect upon some
important conversation that you have had in the last
few days. Try to identify situations that triggered a
certain emotional reaction from your side.
Now try to think of ways in which you could have
handled the situation better, without giving in to the
emotional outburst.
For instance, consider this scenario
Incident: Your subordinate misses a deadline.
Emotion triggered: Anger. You may have berated the
employee and made them feel ashamed.
Possible alternative response: You could have
reiterated the urgency of meeting the deadline and
asked them what the reason for delay was. If possible,
give another few hours to complete the work and
submit it by the end of the day, opting to identify how
things could be done better next time.
Objectives:
To create a sense of empathy, which is a necessary
skill for active listening;
Develop emotional intelligence by learning to
control your emotions and learn from previous
mistakes.
Train of Thoughts
The last of our active listening exercises, and this one
involves multi-member groups.
Give the first person a certain topic on which they have
to speak. The first person speaks for 1-2 minutes. After
this, the second person summarises what was said
before them and adds their own thoughts regarding
the topic of discussion.
This chain continues in the group, where each person
has to first summarize what has been told before them,
and then add their thoughts.
Objectives:
To develop the skill of attentive listening and linking
one’s own thoughts to the flow of ideas;
To develop the skill of summarising effectively
Although there are many more activities that you can
practice, both as an individual or as a group to improve
your skills of active listening, we found that these were
among the most effective ones.
We curated this list so that you can jump right into it
and begin the journey of mastering the art of active
listening.
Summary
These active listening exercises are meant to be a light
hearted way of bringing your team together for 15
minutes or so, focusing on building team spirit, whilst
learning some important active listening skills.
To be effective, ensure you run through these games
over a number of sessions, so the team can naturally
develop their skills and thinking.
Explain the objectives and outcomes to each game, so
the team can link why they are doing it, but also express
that it’s just a bit of fun too!
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Post Author – Michael Bennet
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