Welcome to the Listening Practices and Exercises page. Below you’ll discover a slew of printable resources and links to help you cultivate better listening skills! We’ve organized them by the kind of resource as well as by the skill each resource can help you build.
Listening Quizzes and Assessments
How well do you listen? You can take this quiz yourself and then have a friend take it with you in mind for more feedback!
What listening struggles commonly come up for you? Use this infographic flowchart and then have a friend use it with you in mind for more feedback!
Let a friend take this questionnaire in order to give you feedback on your listening skills.
Printouts: Fridge-Sheets and Guides
Listening Models
Print out this copy of our model for Better Listening. The Be, Do, Notice model showcases the different aspects of listening that combine to create a loving experience.
Print out this copy of our model for Better Listening. The Be, Do, Notice model showcases the different aspects of listening that combine to create a loving experience.
Cheat Sheets
Print out this copy of our model for Better Listening. The Be, Do, Notice model showcases the different aspects of listening that combine to create a loving experience.
Print out this page of tips and card for your wallet! It helps remind you to be a BEE (Breath, Expand, Endorse) and not a SNAIL (Scorekeep, Negate, Analyze, Lecture) during tough conversations.
Print out this card for your wallet to remind yourself of the types of information being relayed in every message.
Print out this page to help remember the ways an attentive listener shows up physically. Use it as a graphic guide to communicate effectively with your own body language.
Master Lists
Print off this reference list of twelve ways in which a listener can fail to listen. Even with the best intentions, the person who is being ‘listened’ to and wants empathy is left wanting. A great resource to come back to for reflection.
Want to remind yourself of different perspectives to keep you humble and curious? This little card offers eight helpful lenses with which to approach a conversation with someone you may disagree with.
A helpful list of possible intentions you or someone else could have during a conversation, coupled with a few reflection questions. Refer to this list retroactively to consider how you may have approached a conversation and the impact that approach had; or use this list proactively to commit to a specific intention before entering a conversation.
A masterlist of various regulation techniques to help you center yourself and enable your listening abilities. Some of these can be practiced during conversation, and some may require you to take a break.
Whether you want to avoid small talk or become closer to a friend, this list will provide you with quality, open-ended questions to ask to encourage better conversations and deep listening.
Guides
Print off this reference guide for the practice of RRV, the process of empathically engaging with someone to help them feel heard and understood. One side explains the steps and the other side provides a list of possible needs from Nonviolent Communication (NVC).
Worksheets and Exercises
For the Individual
This exercise is designed to help you recognize what biases you carry in your relationships and how they could be affecting your ability to listen to someone. Chock full of detailed examples and a thorough explanation of the role of biases in listening, it’s sure to illuminate unseen processes at work.
This collection of three simple meditations can help you regulate, enhance awareness, focus, intentionality and compassion; all invaluable skills for listening well.
This guided meditation worksheet helps build the skill of awareness and includes reflection prompts.
This worksheet helps guide your listening in various levels of depth by guiding you through the layers of information in a message: your personal filters, what is being said, how it is being said, and why it is being said. Use this guide and worksheet to practice with each level.
Interested in reflecting on your listening skills overall? Use this prompt sheet to gain greater insight into where you currently are in your practice, how you want to grow, and the role listening plays in your life and relationships.
For Partners and Groups
A wonderful way to learn about the role of listening in our lives is through interviewing. Interviewing puts us in the frame of mind to try to really understand another person and do our best to get the full picture. Not only that, but this interview is about listening itself, so its a two-for-one!
By taking yourself out of the dynamic and observing other conversations, we free our attention up to see the intricacies of whats at play when communicating. This exercise can be done with groups of three or more or independently with movie clips!
We’ve put together a collection of short and fun games to demonstrate different skills and aspects of listening. This printout includes debriefing questions.
This detailed guide can be printed out and used with a partner to help you hone your listening skills during conversation. While it may feel clunky to share a conversation step by step, the practice will help accentuate the typically rapidly changing and unnoticed stages of conversation and the role listening plays in the dynamic.
By Skill
Below we’ve organized exercises and links to complimentary topics by their relevant listening skill. The exercises listed above are repeated and additional resources are included as well.
