What are the different levels of listening? What are the main types of listening and how can we progress our listening skills?

There are various types and levels of listening proposed by various authors, coaches and training organisations.

Some of the best-known are:

• Stephen Covey’s 5 Levels of Listening
• Otto Scharmer’s 4 Levels of Listening

There are other types of listening, such as informational, critical, sympathetic, discriminative, active, comprehensive and transformational listening which we will also look at. 

Stephen Covey’s 5 Levels of Listening

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about the following five levels of listening: 

1. Ignoring: Actively not listening and showing it with body language
2. Pretending: Using body language and eye contact to appear to be listening, but not actually paying attention to the speaker
3. Selective listening: Listening just to the elements that are of interest and tuning out everything else
4. Attentive listening: Fully paying attention to the speaker and taking in what is being said
5. Empathetic listening: Listening at a deeper level to understand the intent (the beliefs, values and feelings) behind the message

Otto Scharmer’s 4 Levels of Listening

Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at MIT, a founder of The Presencing Institute and author of Theory U and Presence.

Scharmer’s four levels of listening are related to his work on Theory U and came from his team’s observations of interactions in organisations they were working with. 

Scharmer’s 4 Levels of Listening are:

1. Downloading: The first level of listening, downloading, is partial listening (similar to Covey’s selective listening) where the listener is only picking up what they are expecting or information that confirms their current thinking. 

2. Factual listening: The second level of listening, factual listening, is where the listener is focussing on information they don’t know. This requires greater attention than downloading (again, similar to attentive listening) but the focus is primarily on facts, not the deeper context of what is being said.

3. Empathic listening: The third level of listening, empathetic listening, is giving a level of attention that creates a human connection with the speaker. Here, the listener is listening to pick up on what is not said, as well as the words, and to understand the emotional context of the conversation.

4. Generative listening: The fourth level of listening, generative listening, goes beyond just connecting with the speaker. On this level the listener connects with the core ideas in the conversation with an intent to support the best ideas into the future. This ideal – of actively seeking after truth, for the benefit of all – can be likened to Socratic dialogue. 

“To ‘fix’ someone’s problem, you very often  just need to enfactically listen to them” – Tim Ferris

Other Types of Listening

There are other types of listening that you may come across, particularly in the field of coaching. Here are the main ones:

Informational listening

Informational listening is where the listener wants to gather data. This is often the sort of listening used in a learning environment by students.

Critical Listening

Critical listening seeks to distinguish fact from fiction. This is often used in debates and is similar to factual listening and selective listening. 

Discriminative Listening

Discriminative listening is the ability to identify and analyse non-verbal cues, even when not fully understanding the words. This is how babies first learn to listen and it is also how we listen to people speaking languages we don’t understand.

Sympathetic Listening

Sympathetic listening picks up on the emotional content of a conversation and the listener engages their feelings (often mirroring emotions such as sorrow or anger) but falls short of empathetic listening which seeks to truly understand the person’s unique perspective and the larger context.

Active, Comprehensive Listening

Active listening and comprehensive listening are similar to empathetic or empathic listening, where the listener seeks to pick up on the whole context of the message, not just the content, along with non-verbal cues and feelings. 

Transformative Listening

Author Nancy Kline talks about transformative listening. This is similar to generative listening.

“Transformative listening is nearly a work of art. It comes from genuine interest in where your client will go in their thinking, and from your courage to trust their intelligence.” – Nancy Kline

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Embracing the various types and levels of listening to enhance your skills

You will have noticed that there are various similarities and overlaps between the levels and types of listening listed above. The actual term or level is less important than the knowledge that different levels exist which improves our self-awareness whilst in conversations. We can then seek to move up the scale to more active, empathetic or generative listening, by truly giving our focus and attention to a speaker. 

Truly giving your attention to someone and listening at a deeper level is tiring as it requires us to use much more of our brain than lower levels of listening (such as selective or informational listening). That is why it requires practice.

So, next time you are in conversation, challenge yourself to listen on an even better level. You will learn more and the speaker will feel more valued, leading to a better rapport with that person.