11 Practical Active Listening Exercises to Use at Work | Leave a comment

Have you ever left a meeting and felt like your ideas had been ignored?

Have you noticed that conversations in the workplace sometimes lead to confusion, mistakes, and deadlines that were missed?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these two questions, you are not alone.

Communication breakdowns can be a major headache in the workplace—and a lot of these can often result from a failure to truly listen.

Active listening exercises can help change the way you connect, collaborate, and problem-solve at work.

Why Active Listening is Important at Work

Active listening is more than just hearing the words someone spoke; it is about being in the moment, understanding what message has been communicated, and intentionally responding. When you do not listen actively, you’ll consistently be misunderstanding, debating conflicts, and creating an environment of uncertainty, fear, and distrust.

When teams get into trouble, it is often when people listen to respond instead of listening to understand. This leads to poor decision making, repeated mistakes, team tension, and conflict. If your workplace is going to focus on active listening, you will be able to:

• Enhance teamwork and collaboration by allowing everyone to feel heard.
• Reduce misunderstanding, and save time, money, and effort on errors.
• Improve employee morale and engagement.
• Address and settle conflict before it escalates.
• Build and enhance relationships with your team members, customers, and stakeholders.

If you want to improve productivity, innovation, and overall satisfaction in the workplace, you will need to improve active listening.

Practical Active Listening Activities to Try at Work

1. Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is a simple, yet effective active listening exercise that verifies that you actually have listened and understood the speaker. Paraphrasing is restating the speaker’s message in your own words.

To practice active listening and paraphrasing:

• During your meeting or conversation, listen respectfully and do not interrupt when the speaker is sharing.
• Once the speaker concludes, paraphrase the main idea in your own language by beginning with phrases such as, “So what I’m hearing is…” or “Let me make sure that I understand…”
• Check-in with the speaker to ensure that your paraphrase accurately reflects what they intended.
• Practice this both one-on-one and in groups.

Example: Your manager describes a new project workflow. You paraphrase what they said: “So what I’m hearing is we will be submitting reports by Friday and not Monday and will use the new template. Is that correct?” This allows the speaker to provide clarifying information and ensures everyone is on the same page.

Value: Paraphrasing shows respect to the speaker, minimizes misunderstanding, and can reveal underlying assumptions or confusion on the part of the speaker before they escalate into a larger issue.

2. The “No Interruptions” Challenge

Interruptions are an everyday habit in the workplace, and they can lead to a breakdown in communication and deter participatory listening. This activity can help team members change this habit and intentionally listen.

Action Steps:

• In a meeting or team discussion, establish a protocol that only the person with a designated object (a “talking stick,” for example) can speak.
• Designate a timer for each speaker (at least 2-3 minutes). During this time, everyone else must listen silently (no interruptions, questions, comments).
• Once the speaker has finished, listeners can then ask clarifying questions or paraphrase what they understood before the group moves onto the next speaker.
• Rotate the speaker so everyone has an opportunity to share.

Example: During a project debrief, each team member is allowed 3 minutes to provide their perspective and everyone else must listen silently. Listeners take notes and either ask clarifying questions or paraphrase what they heard before moving on to the next speaker.

Purpose: This exercise promotes equal contribution, helps quieter voices be amplified, and trains everyone to listen attentively rather than thinking about their responses.

3. Body Language Awareness

Nonverbal communication is an important part of active listening. This exercise will help you become more aware of your own body language and how it impacts your listener.

Action Steps:

• Pair up with a colleague. Each person will go once as the speaker and once as the listener.
• As the listener, maintain eye contact, and use open posture (arms uncrossed, slightly leaning forward).
• Eliminate distractions—put your phone away, close your laptop, and be fully present with the speaker.
• After each round, ask the speaker how your body language made them feel and what they noticed.

Example: You notice that when you make eye contact and nod, your colleague feels encouraged to share more. When you check your phone or cross your arms, your colleague withdraws and seems reticent.

Purpose: Positive body language shows you are engaged and respect the speaker, which helps to build trust and creates productive conversations.

4. The “Echo” Game

This exercise helps to train your brain to listen to the speaker’s words rather than leap ahead to your own response.

Action Steps:

• Pair up. One participant will share a work-related story, challenge, or idea.
• The listener must repeat back the last sentence or key phrase the speaker said before responding to, or asking a follow-up question.
• After a few minutes, switch roles.

Example: Your colleague says, “I’m tired of deadlines changing.” You repeat, “Deadlines are changing,” then you ask, “What has that done to your workload?” to show that you are genuinely interested in learning more and getting them to share more.

Value: The echo game not only slows down the conversation, so that you can ensure you’ve heard correctly, but keeps the listener focused rather than thinking ahead of what they want to say next.

5. Clarifying Questions Drill

Asking clarifying questions provides you with the best opportunity to practice active listening. The clarifying questions exercise helps provide you an opportunity to practice pushing the conversation deeper without assuming where the conversation is going to go.

Action Steps:

• After someone has described an idea or provided you with instructions, challenge yourself to ask at least two clarifying questions before you respond in any way.
• Use open-ended questions such as, “Can you clarify what you meant by that?” “What do you think are your biggest challenges with that?” or “When you think of success, what does that mean to you?”
• Avoid yes/no questions, or any questions that could be assumed to be judgmental.

Example: A team member shares a potential new workflow. You ask, “Can you help me understand how this would be implemented step by step?” and “What do you think are the biggest risks or obstacles to making it happen?” This helps you uncover important elements and potential issues that exist earlier in the discussions.

Value: Clarifying questions often uncover unspoken issues, can help you avoid wasting time and money on making a mistake, and demonstrate to the other person you value their professionalism.

6. The Feelings First Exercise

Our emotions often drive our behaviours at work, but we do not discuss them; this exercise supports you in better tuning into the emotional content of conversations.

Action Steps:

• Take the context of the situation into account when you listen, and take note of modalities such as changes in tone, pacing, or changes in the speaker’s non-verbal communication.
• Before responding, reflect back the emotion you think you’re hearing: “It sounds like you’re frustrated,” or “I sense you’re excited about this project.”
• Ask if your perception is correct and invite the speaker to elaborate.

Example: A colleague seems tense during a meeting. You say, “You sound a bit overwhelmed by all the new changes. Is that right?” This opens the door for honest dialogue and support.

Value: Recognizing and naming emotions builds empathy, strengthens relationships, and can defuse tension before it escalates.

7. The “One-Minute Pause”

This simple but powerful exercise encourages reflection and prevents knee-jerk reactions.

Action Steps:

• When a challenging topic or heated discussion arises, suggest a one-minute pause before anyone responds.
• Use the pause to reflect on what was said, check your emotions, and consider your response.
• After the pause, encourage responses that reference the speaker’s main points.

Example: In a contentious budget meeting, the team agrees to a one-minute pause before responding to a controversial suggestion. Afterward, people respond more thoughtfully and respectfully.

Value: Pausing helps people regulate their emotions, avoid defensiveness, and ensure their responses are grounded in understanding.

8. “Summarize and Reflect” Meetings

Summarizing ensures everyone leaves a meeting with the same understanding and prevents miscommunication.

Action Steps:

• Assign a “summarizer” for each meeting to recap the main points, decisions, and action items at the end.
• Encourage all team members to add or clarify anything that may have been missed.
• Use the summary as a basis for meeting notes or follow-up emails.

Example: At the end of a strategy session, the summarizer says, “Here’s what we decided today: we’ll launch the campaign next month, John will lead the creative, and Sarah will handle analytics. Did I miss anything?” Team members can clarify or add details as needed.

Value: This habit reinforces active listening, reduces misunderstandings, and provides accountability for follow-up actions.

9. Role Reversal Activities

Role reversal can also be a good strategy to create empathy and listening.

Actions:

• As a group or pairs, select roles to investigate (e.g. management/employee; client/service provider) and create a scenario.
• Each person will tell the others what their perspective is on a relevant workplace issue, then they switch roles and defend the alternative position.
• Debrief the exercise to reflect on insights and feelings.

Example: You are the client frustrated with delivery delays, while your colleagues are project managers. Once you switch roles, you notice all of the pressures and constraints that the project manager has.

Value: Role reversal reduces barriers, brings latent issues to the forefront, and gives team members a chance to clarify perspectives.

10. The “Listening Journal”

Tracking your listening habits could uncover blind spots and create occasions for professional development.

Actions:

• For one week, keep a journal of the most important conversations that you have at your workplace.
• Before each meeting, evaluate your listening engagement on a scale of 1-5 (1 = distracted; 5 = fully present).
• Reflect on what affected your listening—were you multitasking, tired or stressed? Did you interrupt, or assume?
• After one week, look back on your notes and reflect on trends and opportunities for improvement.

Example: You notice that you are distracted by email notifications during afternoon meetings, where you could have chosen to focus on the meeting itself. You challenge yourself to put your phone away and schedule important talking points as early as possible in the day.

Value: Journaling increases self-awareness and enables you to make conscientious changes to improve listening.

11. Silent Meetings

This unique practice can increase focus and promote equal opportunities to participate, particularly for more introverted individuals.

Steps to take:

• For part or all of a meeting, communicate only through writing notes, written sticky notes, or through a shared digital document.
• The group will read, reflect and respond through writing, as compared to speaking.
• After the writing portion of the meeting is completed, discuss what doing it in this manner has changed for you in your understanding and engagement.

Example: In a brainstorming session, everyone adds one idea on sticky notes for 10 minutes, then discusses them out loud. The more introverted and quieter members of the team have a chance to contribute, and the team has a larger number of ideas to consider.

Value: A silent meeting reduces interruptions, provides greater opportunity for thoughtful reflection, and ensures everyone’s voice is recognized.

Final Thoughts on Active Listening at Work

Listening exercises are more than simply communication hacks—they are a tool to be used when producing conversations for healthy, engaged, high-performance work. As we put these into practice we move toward cultures of trust, reduce misunderstandings, and increase collaborative and innovative outputs.

Be intentional to try one or two exercises with your team this week. As you listen, you will discover you build relationships, provide spaces that have less conflict, and work where people do feel heard and valued. You can start whenever you wish, but the sooner you begin, the sooner you will experience the outcomes—get started today and make active listening one of your work culture cornerstones.