 Do you sometimes feel like you're not always getting the message from someone else? Active listening and paying attention to nonverbals can help. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. This week we have another tip to help us all be better communicators and we can all do that by paying attention to nonverbals and engaging in active listening. Active listening is when we treat listening as a conscious effort to understand what other people are saying to us instead of just passively collecting whatever information makes it through our ears and into our brain. Paying attention to nonverbal communication can tell us that people are actively listening to us and showing solid nonverbals can show other people that we're actively listening to them. So how can we all be better at active listening? As we've talked about in other videos, letting people finish what they're saying without interrupting, correcting or judging is the best way to really understand their message. If it's helpful, take notes or write down questions that you have so you can ask them when the person is done speaking. It's very important not to prepare your rebuttals or responses while you're listening because you may miss important information. When the speaker is done, summarizing their points before moving on is a good way to confirm that you understood the message they were trying to get across. After summarizing and getting that confirmation, now is the time to ask clarifying questions and state your position. Throughout the communication process, it's very important to be aware of body language and other nonverbal communication both when we're listening and when we're speaking. Examples of nonverbals we want to be aware of are eye contact. Effective eye contact can show that we're engaged and listening, but we also don't want to stare the whole time. Use periodic eye contact with others whether you're speaking or listening. Smiling is a way to show that we're paying attention and support the speaker or agree with what they're saying. Even if we don't agree 100%, smiling can help the speaker feel welcome to share their thoughts without fear of being judged. Just like eye contact though, we don't want to have an enormous grin the whole time, but an occasional smile helps out a lot. Posture is another nonverbal cue if we are listening and engaged. Active listeners will typically lean forward into the conversation or might tilt their head or rest their head on one hand. Slouching, turning away, or fidgeting might indicate to the speaker that we're not listening. Finally, if we see our listeners automatically mirroring our facial expressions, it's a good sign that they're listening and have empathy and are engaged in what we're saying. If we're the listener, we need to be very careful not to consciously mimic the speaker because this is often a sign of an attention. When it comes to active listening, the best thing we can do is be conscious of our behavior and the behavior of others, especially when it comes to nonverbal communication. So the next time you're out with a group of people, pay attention to your own nonverbal cues and see what other people are doing and try to figure out how many people are engaged or in active listening. Then the next time you're speaking, see how many people are actively listening to you. You can find out more about active listening and nonverbal communication at the link below. We got a lot of the ideas and tips for this video from that article, so check it out. If you found this helpful, don't forget to check us out on Facebook and Twitter and join us every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time for a live interactive leadership discussion on BLAM. Click off on that globe to the right. That'll get you subscribed to our email list and that'll bring all of our content direct to your inbox. Thanks for watching. I really appreciate it. And remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.