What are the Types of Listening Skills? 9 Types Explained

You're told to be a good communicator, but that’s not just about talking. It’s also about how well you listen. The types of listening skills you use can build trust, solve problems, or lead to missed opportunities. 

In job interviews, team meetings, or one-on-one conversations, the right listening style helps you stand out. By understanding the 9 types of listening skills, you’ll sharpen your focus, respond more effectively, and show others that you’re someone worth working with.

Types of listening skills

Each of the nine types of listening styles provide value in the communication process, all of which are designed to improve your communication at work and throughout other areas of your life.

1. Discriminative listening

This type of listening is an innate ability that even small children possess. It's the first listening skill you use, even before you understand words. Discriminative listening relies on cues that go like sound, vocal tone, verbal inflection, and nonverbal cues. 

The idea is to pick up on what’s said, and what isn’t. 

Key features:

• Focus on vocal tone, inflection, and nonverbal cues

• Identify subtle meanings behind words, i.e., read between the lines 

• Useful when communicating across language or cultural barriers 

• Build a stronger understanding of what others are telling you

2. Sympathetic listening

Sympathetic listening focuses on other people's emotions. You hear their words, but you’re also paying attention to the speaker's emotions. Since communication often includes emotion, this listening skill helps build deeper and more valuable relationships with people around you.

At work, this can strengthen relationships with colleagues, especially if you’re in a leadership role. Everyone wants to feel heard and understood, not just managed. 

Key features:

• Centers on the speaker’s emotional state

• Goes beyond words to pick up on feelings

• Builds trust and rapport with team members

• Especially valuable for managers and leaders

3. Therapeutic listening

Therapeutic listening helps you understand another person's perspective. To use this style, you need to put yourself into the speaker's shoes and try to see things from their point of view. It’s about empathy, not just sympathy. 

Therapeutic listening can be a powerful way to build rapport with colleagues and others who either seek advice or simply want to vent their frustrations.

Key features:

• Encourage others to open up 

• Uses neutral body language, good eye contact, and focused facial expressions 

• Helpful for discovering the root of and resolving problems 

4. Comprehensive listening

Comprehensive listening helps you decode and understand messages you hear. Unlike discriminative listening, it's not automatic. You build this listening skill over time. 

Comprehensive listening works alongside other listening skills – discriminative, for example – to give you the full picture. It’s something you’ll use everyday at work to make sense of conversations, meetings, and instructions. 

Key features:

• Relies on language skills to understand and decode verbal messages

• Combines with nonverbal cues for deeper understanding

• Forms the foundation for other listening skills – sympathetic, therapeutic, critical, informational, or reflective listening

• Essential for processing complex information

5. Critical listening

The ability to listen critically is important for anyone who wants to understand complicated messages. It's essential for decoding complex data, evaluating the information that you're hearing, and using your interpretation skills to effectively solve problems and create solutions. This style of listening is even more focused than comprehensive listening, requiring you to do more than just decode a given message. You also need to draw upon your experiences and knowledge base to interpret that message within a broader context.

At work, this skill is key for solving problems, making decisions, and spotting inconsistencies. Critical listening supports teamwork and brainstorming since you’re not just hearing ideas, you’re assessing them. 

Key features:

• Involves constantly analyzing and evaluating messages for relevance and accuracy

• Uses your own knowledge and experience to interpret meaning

• Helps assess credibility and accuracy

• A deep and complex skill necessary for solving problems, brainstorming solutions, and collaborating in an effective way

6. Informational listening

Informational listening is about understanding and retaining what you hear. It’s the style you use when you’re learning. Think: students in the classroom, employees at work, and when you want to acquire knowledge from something you hear. 

Informational listening requires strong focus and concentration, as well as critical thinking skills, for long-term learning. It’s highly valuable if you’re growing your expertise or preparing for a new role.

Key features:

• Ensures that you not only properly interpret what you're hearing, but also absorb knowledge 

• Use informational listening to develop new skills, gain greater expertise in your chosen field, and acquire more insight and understanding from every interaction

• Important for staying sharp and up to date at work 

7. Reflective listening

Reflective listening combines several types of listening. You have to listen to both the words and the emotions behind them. Then, you have to repeat the message back to the speaker, in your own words to confirm understanding. 

Reflective listening can be an important skill in many occupations. For example, Counselors often use it in their work to ensure that they fully understand what they are hearing. In business, managers use this skill with their employees to build greater rapport and trust. Within a team setting, this type of listening can be a useful component of any conflict resolution process, as well as an important technique for effectively collaborating with others.

Key features:

• Involves listening, interpreting, and restating a message

• Focuses on both content and emotional tone

• Helps confirm understanding and build trust

• Useful in coaching, feedback, and conflict resolution

8. Biased listening

If you've ever found yourself tuning out information that you didn't want to hear, then you're already familiar with the concept of biased listening – also called selective listening or selective hearing. 

It often happens unconsciously and can be a real impediment to effective communication. You’ve probably used biased listening when something didn’t align with an opinion you hold or something you believe.

This type of listening skill can create tension, cause misunderstandings, and leave missed opportunities for new information on the table. Recognizing it in yourself is the first step to improving communication. 

Key features:

• Offers no viable benefit for improved communication

• Something to be avoided in your communication efforts

• Important to recognize it – even in others – so you deliver your message in a way that can be understood

9. Appreciative listening

Appreciative listening is about enjoying what you hear. You’re not analyzing or solving anything, rather, you're listening for enjoyment, inspiration, or personal growth. This style isn’t just for music or podcasts; it can show up in the workplace too.

Think of a motivating keynote, a well-told story in a meeting, or a colleague’s creative pitch. Appreciative listening helps you stay open, curious, and connected.

Key features:

• Focuses on enjoyment, inspiration, or appreciation

• Encourages active engagement with positive messaging

• Useful for staying motivated and connected to your work

• Helps build a more positive, supportive workplace culture

Why these types of listening skills matter at work

The types of listening skills you use every day affect how well you understand tasks, connect with coworkers, and respond to challenges. At work, poor listening leads to missed details, confusion, and tension. Strong listening helps you build trust, solve problems faster, and handle feedback with less stress.

Different types of listening skills serve different situations, including everything from using critical thinking in meetings to leveraging empathetic listening to get through tough conversations. The better you match the skill to the moment, the more effective you'll be.

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Tips to help you improve your listening skills

To become a more effective listener, you should learn to improve as many of these different types of listening skills as possible. As you improve your skills, you’ll find that you’re a better learner and have broader communication abilities.

Focus on the speaker

If you regularly find yourself getting distracted while other people are talking, focus on changing that bad habit. Learn to maintain good eye contact when someone is speaking to you and try not to glance at your phone, look at other objects or people in the room, or stare out of the window. Chances are that you understand how frustrating it is to feel as though someone is not giving you their undivided attention during a conversation.

Try to visualize the message you're hearing

Visualization can help to improve your overall comprehension when listening to others. To use visualization effectively, you need to consciously focus on the images that a speaker's words convey. With practice, you can eventually learn to associate the words you hear with visual representations that help to reinforce key concepts.

Avoid interruptions

When you're speaking, there are few things more disruptive than constant interruptions from your listeners. Even minor interruptions can disrupt a speaker's flow, cause them to lose focus, and even make them lose interest in the conversation. 

Put yourself in the speaker’s shoes and do what you can to restrain yourself from interrupting the other person.

• Wait until the person is done speaking before you create your response

• Focus all of your attention on the other person's words 

• Patiently waiting to consider how to respond

Ask questions after they speaking

There will be times when you won't understand the messages you receive. Some things you hear may generate questions in your mind, as you try to improve your comprehension. When that happens, make a mental note of the question and ask it when the speaker's message is complete. Again, do not interrupt the message as it's being delivered.

Keep your questions relevant and responsive to the speaker's words to prove that you’re engaged in the conversation. It’ll help the dialogue flow in a positive, productive, and engaging communication process. 

Watch for nonverbal cues

Given the importance of body language in human communication, understanding nonverbal cues can be critical for improving your listening skills. Train yourself to pay attention to posture, facial expressions, vocal tone, pitch, gestures, and other common nonverbal forms of communication. With enough practice, you can learn to interpret others' nonverbal cues and even draw inferences that help you to more fully comprehend the meaning of their words.

Don't judge the message as it's being delivered

If you find that you're resistant to a speaker's message, there's a good chance that you're instinctively judging the speaker's words. Everyone has their own biases and preconceptions, so it's not uncommon for people to tune out messages that challenge their worldview. 

To avoid that obstacle and force yourself to maintain an open mind when others speak to you. Don’t put up walls of resistance, instead give the speaker your full attention and allow them to finish talking. It’s the best way to ensure understanding. 

Frequently asked questions about listening skills

What are the 4 main types of listening?

The four commonly cited types are discriminative, comprehensive, critical, and appreciative listening. Each serves a different purpose in understanding and responding to communication. Depending on whether your goal is understanding meaning, evaluating information, or simply enjoying the message.

What are the 7 types of listening skills?

Some models list seven core types: discriminative, comprehensive, critical, appreciative, empathetic, selective (biased), and reflective listening. These listening types help you navigate conversations at work and in daily life more effectively.

What are the 5 listening skills?

The five core skills often include paying attention, showing that you're listening, providing feedback, deferring judgment, and responding appropriately. These are often referred to as active listening skills and form the foundation of good communication in both personal and professional settings.

What are 6 active listening skills?

Active listening involves giving your full attention, using body language, reflecting or paraphrasing, asking relevant questions, withholding judgment, and responding with empathy. These skills help you build trust, avoid misunderstandings, and create stronger connections, and are especially useful in team environments and leadership roles.

Master the different types of listening skills

The ability to effectively listen is at least as important as message delivery when it comes to effective communication. By mastering the different types of listening skills, you can learn to interpret what you hear and gain greater insight and knowledge from every interaction with others.

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This article was originally written by Ken Chase. It’s been updated by Marsha Hebert.