- Active listening at work means fully focusing on what someone is saying and showing you understood, not just waiting for your turn to talk.
- It's a trainable habit, not a personality trait. Reading about it changes little. Practising it under pressure is what makes it stick.
- Most workplace errors trace back to something misheard or never said. Better listening makes handovers safer and meetings shorter.
- PowerProv builds active listening through hands-on exercises where listening is the only way the task works, for teams of 10 or more across Australia.
- Results are measured through the Personal Power Index™, with 98% of participants reporting improved listening, collaboration, and confidence.
You build active listening skills at work through practice, not theory. Active listening means fully focusing on what a colleague is saying, understanding it, and showing you've, instead of waiting for your turn to talk. It's a habit anyone can train, and PowerProv builds it into teams through hands-on workshops across Australia. Most people believe they already listen well. The gap between that belief and reality is where the trouble starts.
What Is Active Listening at Work?
Active listening is deliberate attention. You focus on the person speaking, take in what they actually mean, and respond in a way that proves you understood.
That last part matters. Silence isn't listening. Nodding along while you rehearse your reply isn't listening either. Real active listening shows up in what you do next: the follow-up question, the quick check that you got it right, the point you build on rather than steamroll.
At work it lives in the small moments. A handover between shifts. A quick catch-up before a deadline. A team member half-raising a concern and watching to see if anyone picks it up. Get those moments right and work runs smoother. Get them wrong and the cost shows up later, usually as a mistake nobody meant to make.
“We're all taught to read, write and speak. Almost nobody is taught how to listen.”— Eran Thomson, Founder, PowerProv
Eran Thomson unpacks that idea in three minutes on the One Word Suggestion podcast.
Why Does Active Listening Matter for Teams?
Because almost every avoidable problem at work starts with a communication breakdown, and most breakdowns are a listening failure in disguise. Something was misheard, half-heard, or said but never taken in.
When people feel genuinely listened to, they behave differently. They share more. They flag risks earlier. They trust the person across the table. That trust is what turns a group of capable individuals into a team that moves fast without dropping things.
The business case isn't soft, either. LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report found nearly half of executives worry their people lack the skills to deliver on strategy. Communication sits at the top of that list, and listening sits under communication. A team that listens well is a team that executes well.
Can Active Listening Actually Be Trained?
Yes, and this is the part most people get wrong. They treat listening as a personality trait, something you either have or you don't. It isn't. It's a habit, and habits respond to practice.
The catch is that reading about listening rarely changes how anyone listens. Everyone already knows the advice: make eye contact, don't interrupt, ask questions. Knowing it and doing it under real pressure are different things. The skill only shifts when you practise it in a setting where not listening has an immediate, visible consequence.
That's exactly what PowerProv workshops create. In team communication exercises, listening isn't a nice-to-have. It's the only way the task works at all.
What Gets in the Way of Listening at Work?
Three things, mostly.
- Waiting to talk. The reply forms in your head, and from that moment you've stopped taking anything in. You're just holding for a gap.
- Distraction. A phone on the desk, a screen half-open, a mind on the next meeting. Attention is finite, and split attention isn't listening.
- Status and assumption. When you think you already know what someone will say, you stop listening for what they actually say. This one hits hardest across levels of seniority, where a junior voice gets tuned out before it finishes.
Naming these barriers is easy. Beating them takes reps. A team that has practised catching itself in the act listens differently the next morning.
How Does PowerProv Build Active Listening?
Improvisation only works if performers listen to every word the other person offers, because there's no script to fall back on. PowerProv takes that principle and points it at the workplace.
In a PowerProv session, participants work through fast-moving situations where they can only respond well if they have truly heard their fellow participant. Miss a detail and the exercise falls apart, in a low-stakes, genuinely fun way. That instant feedback teaches the brain to stay present far better than any slide could.
The method builds a cluster of linked skills: listening, thinking on your feet, and the confidence to speak up. Participants aren't learning to be funny or perform. They're building professional communication they use back at their desks the next day.
“Well suited to any organisation that wants to help their teams connect more, improve focus, active listening and have fun.”
Harvard Business Review's Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, in their research on the best listeners, found the same thing PowerProv builds toward: great listening isn't silent absorption. It's a two-way exchange where the listener asks, reflects, and helps the speaker think. That's a skill you rehearse, not a trait you're born with.
What Are 5 Active Listening Techniques You Can Use at Work?
Five active listening techniques PowerProv teaches are the "yes, and" conversation, using the other person's words, the Hot Seat Listener, Red Ball, and keeping a pen and paper handy. Eran Thomson, founder of PowerProv, walks through all five in the video at the top of this page.
- The "yes, and" conversation. Two people talk one sentence at a time, and every sentence has to start with "yes, and". You can't build on what someone said unless you heard it. Eran notes that "yes, and" doesn't have to mean you agree. It can simply mean "I acknowledge you".
- Use their words. Eran calls this the Jedi level of "yes, and". As well as starting with "yes, and", you repeat some of the words the other person has just used. Hearing your own words come back proves you were listened to.
- Hot Seat Listener. One person sits between two others, who each fire questions at them at speed. Most people freeze at first. With practice they learn to tune in, and go from stuck to fluid.
- Red Ball. A group passes an invisible object around the room, and then more objects are added. People learn they can't track everything, and switch to being present. The lesson, in Eran's words: "specificity kills ambiguity."
- Pen and paper. This one isn't an improv exercise. When you feel the urge to interrupt, write the thought down and let the other person finish. They feel heard, and your point isn't lost.
Eran calls listening "the simplest, hardest gift to give someone." The first four techniques are exercises PowerProv runs in its workshops. The fifth is one you can start using today.
How Do You Practise Active Listening Day to Day?
The workshop plants the habit. These small moves keep it alive between sessions:
- Put the phone out of sight before a one-on-one starts.
- Let people finish. Count to two before you reply.
- Ask one real question before you offer your own view.
- Reflect back what you heard in your own words, then check you got it.
- Notice when you've stopped listening and started rehearsing, and reset.
None of this is complicated. All of it's hard to do consistently under pressure, which is why practice beats good intentions every time.
How Do You Measure Better Listening?
Leaders want proof, not a warm feeling from the day. PowerProv provides it through the Personal Power Index™, an ongoing study measuring skills like listening, collaboration, and confidence before and after every workshop since 2023.
The numbers hold up. Ninety-eight percent of participants report improved listening, collaboration, and thinking on their feet. With a 4.9-star rating, 13+ years of work, and a money-back guarantee behind every session, PowerProv brings a track record to match the claim.
Build a Team That Actually Listens
Active listening is the quiet skill that makes every other skill work. It's trainable, measurable, and cheaper to build than the mistakes poor listening causes. PowerProv's communication skills training turns it into a habit your team keeps, in a way that's engaging rather than earnest.
Book a discovery call to talk through your team, or see how it works first.
Read the full video transcript
Active listening. What is active listening? What are some active listening techniques or active listening skills? I'm going to get into it right now and share with you five active listening techniques that we teach at PowerProv.
For those of you who don't know, I'm Eran Thomson. I'm founder of PowerProv, and we are Australia's most loved team training business. We teach business teams the soft skills for success: communication, connection, collaboration, improving confidence and camaraderie, boosting engagement and also retention. And we have the data to prove it. I invite you to check out our Personal Power Index if you haven't heard of that. It's a longitudinal study that proves what we do really works. But you're here for active listening information, so I'm going to share with you now five of my favourite active listening exercises that we do at PowerProv.
First of all, what is active listening? I think a lot of people don't even know what that means. But if you've ever been in a conversation with someone and you can tell they're just waiting for you to shut up so they can start talking, it's a terrible feeling, right? Those people are not listening to understand you or to respond to what you're offering. They're just trying to put their own message into the mix.
It can be really hard to become a good active listener. I often call it the simplest, hardest gift to give someone. And if you think about why we're all probably not as good at listening as we'd like to be, it's because we're never really taught. We're all taught how to read. We're all taught how to write. We're all taught how to speak. But no one really teaches you how to listen. Your mum or dad may have said, "Listen!" But that's not a lesson. That's a threat.
So at PowerProv, we help business teams get better at active listening. One of the ways that we do that is by teaching a tool you may have already heard of called "yes, and". Yes, and is a simple set of words, but by the time you finish training with us you will have realised for yourself and your whole team how completely transformational and powerful they are when you start to use them the right way.
One of the exercises that we do is we get people to have what we call a yes, and conversation. That's two people having a conversation one sentence at a time, but the rules are that every one of their sentences has to begin with the words "yes, and". As you can imagine, if you know the person across from you is going to have to respond to anything and everything you say with "yes, and", and you are as well, you're going to pay a little more attention to what they're saying, because you want to be able to add more information or build on what they're saying.
One important note about yes, and that people often get hung up on is that they think it means you agree, and it doesn't have to. Using yes, and does not mean you have to give up your truth. There are two ways to think about it. It could be, yes, I agree with you and I want to add more information. Or it could be, yes, I acknowledge you and I want to add more information. So it doesn't always mean you have to agree. You can just use it as an acknowledgement. Either way, I guarantee if you try this at home, the people across from you will slowly be falling in love with you every time they hear you say yes when they stop talking. It feels so nice, and you will experience this for yourself at a massive level in our workshops.
So that's yes, and. Then later in the workshop we do what I call the Jedi level of yes, and, which is the same thing again, a pair exercise where you have a yes, and conversation with a partner. But in addition to using "yes, and" at the start of every sentence, you also try and use the words the person has just spoken in your response. So if they say, "Yes, and pizza is the most delicious food in the world," you might say, "Yes, and Chinese food is also one of the most delicious foods in the world." And they might say, "Yes, and I had Chinese food yesterday. I've never seen a Chinese pizza, though." And you might say, "Yes, and a Chinese pizza would be kind of crazy, right?" So you can see how, if you're in that conversation, hearing yes feels good. Hearing your own words spoken back to you feels good. And it proves that the person is listening.
The third exercise we run that I love is a really intense but powerful listening exercise. I call it the Hot Seat Listener. The way that works is you have one person sitting in a chair and two people sitting on either side of them, facing them, speaking directly into either ear. The rules are simple. The people speaking have to ask a question over and over and over, at speed, until they get an answer, and then ask a new question. They're relentless with their questioning, and it's happening on both sides.
What you see is most people in the middle freak out. They can't tune in. They don't know how to use their energy or their body or their eyes or their ears to respond to any question well. But slowly, over time, with practice and repetition, observation and teaching and training, they start to be able to tune in and hear. And then suddenly they switch from being completely stuck to being completely fluid. It's incredible to watch. That exercise shows that in chaos you can find the connection to the people who are trying to communicate with you, think on your feet, respond authentically and give them a clearer answer.
A fourth exercise I love that speaks to active listening is called Red Ball. I don't want to give away all the secret sauce here, but basically it's an exercise where we move an invisible object around the room. Slowly, over time, more objects are introduced. As this happens, people try to pay more and more attention to what's happening, trying to keep track of everything, until they realise that's impossible to do. When that moment happens, they switch from trying to keep track of everything to just being present and aware and responding to what's happening in front of them.
One of my favourite expressions that comes from this work is "specificity kills ambiguity". What I mean by that is, when someone says to you, "Hey, this is a red ball," and you say, "Yes, this is a red ball," then both of you know what you're dealing with is a red ball. The specificity there kills any ambiguity. How many times have you been at your office and someone's come up to you and gone, "Hey, you got that thing for tomorrow?" And you're like, "Yeah, I've got things for tomorrow." But what thing is the right thing? Specificity kills ambiguity. If you're not listening, you can't be specific. And if you're not listening for the specific information, you'll miss it, and balls get dropped. So that's Red Ball.
And then lastly, my pro tip for being a great listener is not an improv exercise at all. It's simply to carry a pen and paper with you at all times. Listening, like I said before, is probably the simplest, hardest gift to give. All of us want to jump into a conversation and share our ideas and thinking. All of us want to affirm and acknowledge when someone is speaking to us. But it can disrupt the flow, it can get in the way, and ultimately it will make conversations feel stilted and jumbled.
So what I recommend is keeping a pen and paper handy. Any time you're in a conversation with someone and the urge to interrupt comes up or a thought pops into your head, write it down and wait for the other person to finish talking. One of two things always happens. The first is that the person finishes what they were going to say. They feel honoured, heard and respected because you let them say everything they wanted to say without interrupting. And they may have even gotten to the point you were going to make. If you think about a work environment, you're all on the same team. You're all on the same page. You're all working towards the same outcome. So it doesn't matter where the idea came from, as long as it got surfaced.
The second thing is, if they don't raise the things that you wanted to raise or felt are important, they're more likely to be receptive to hearing it from you, because you've given them the simplest, hardest gift, which is to be a good listener. And you have all your notes captured, so nothing is lost.
So, my five pro tips for active listening: four exercises and one little cheat code. Yes, and. The Jedi level of yes, and, which is using the other person's words. Hot Seat Listener, which is about learning how to respond under pressure, reacting, adapting, communicating and thinking fast on your feet. Red Ball, which is about specificity killing ambiguity and paying attention to the messages as they come in so that you can pass them along confidently and clearly. And then of course pen and paper, to make sure that you're not one of those people who always interrupts to make their point.
So those are my active listening techniques and active listening skills tips. If you want to learn more about active listening or about PowerProv and what we do, I invite you to check out the link below or get in touch. We love what we do so much, and we cannot wait to share it with you and your team. Thanks for watching.
Sources
- What Great Listeners Actually Do · Harvard Business Review
- 2025 Workplace Learning Report · LinkedIn Learning
Frequently asked questions
What is active listening in the workplace?
Active listening is fully focusing on what a colleague is saying, understanding it, and showing you've, rather than waiting for your turn to talk. At work it looks like asking a follow-up question, checking you understood, and holding back the reply forming in your head. It's a skill that shapes handovers, meetings, and hard conversations, and it can be trained.
Can active listening actually be trained?
Yes. Active listening is a habit, not a fixed personality trait, so it improves with practice like any other skill. Reading about it rarely changes behaviour. Practising it under a little pressure does. PowerProv's workshops give teams that practice through hands-on exercises where listening is the only way the task works, so the habit sticks after the day ends.
Why is active listening important for teams?
Because most workplace mistakes trace back to something misheard, half-heard, or never said. When people feel genuinely listened to, they share more, raise concerns earlier, and trust each other more. That makes handovers safer, meetings shorter, and conflict rarer. Strong listening is the quiet foundation under almost every other team skill.
What is the difference between hearing and active listening?
Hearing is passive. The words reach you while your attention is somewhere else. Active listening is deliberate. You focus on the person, take in their meaning, and respond in a way that shows you understood. Hearing needs no effort. Active listening needs attention, patience, and the discipline to hold your own reply.
How can I improve active listening at work?
Start small. Put the phone away, let people finish, and ask one genuine question before you answer. Reflect back what you heard in your own words to check you got it. These habits feel awkward at first and natural with repetition. Structured practice, like a PowerProv workshop, speeds that up by making the habit muscle memory.
Is PowerProv active listening training a comedy workshop?
No. PowerProv draws on improv principles, but no one performs or tries to be funny. The exercises build professional skills: listening, clear communication, and thinking on your feet. The sessions are genuinely enjoyable, which is why the skills stick, but the goal is measurable capability, not laughs. Workshops run for teams of 10 or more across Australia and online.
How do you measure whether listening has improved?
PowerProv measures it through the Personal Power Index™, an ongoing study tracking skills like listening and collaboration before and after each workshop. Ninety-eight percent of participants report improved listening, collaboration, and confidence. That before-and-after data gives leaders evidence of change, not just a feedback form from the day.
