The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook
208with them all the time. If you always agree with whatever is said, it may raise 
the other person’s suspicions about whether you’re really listening.
Improving Your Listening Skills
The authors of Messages  provide a number of suggestions for improving listening 
skills. First, they suggest that effective listening should involve active participation rather 
than just sitting quietly and absorbing the information. Active listening involves main -
taining appropriate eye contact, paraphrasing what the person has said (“So, in other 
words, what you are saying is . . .”), asking for clariﬁcation (asking questions to help 
you understand what was said), and providing the other person with feedback (or your 
reactions to what he or she said). Whenever possible, feedback should be immediate (as 
soon as you understand the communication), honest (reﬂecting your true feelings), and 
supportive (in other words, gentle and unlikely to be hurtful to the other person).
In addition, it’s important to listen with empathy . Being empathic means conveying 
the idea that you genuinely understand the other person’s message as well as the feelings 
he or she is experiencing. As discussed in chapter 6, there are many different ways of 
interpreting a given situation. By trying to understand another person’s perspective, you 
will be better able to listen and to communicate that fact. Note that it is not necessary 
for you to agree with the other person’s perspective—just to understand it. However, 
even when someone says something that you believe to be completely incorrect, you 
probably can identify at least a small part of the message that is true. Letting the person 
know that you understand his or her perspective conveys empathy, even if you don’t