What are some best practices for active listening in tense situations?

In my experience, active listening starts with an open, friendly tone. Not adversarial. Next, remain attentive, eye contact, listening. No interruption, showing a calm demeanor under a tense discussion shows you’re taking in what they’re communicating. Next, staying above any negative comments, taking the high road, and realizing that in tense moments, there will be emotions. While emotions can run high, logic in a discussion may not, so be strong enough to not react. Take mental note of the salient points of the communication. At the appropriate point where you can see the communication is concluding/concluded from what they have to state, genuinely acknowledge you got it, fully understand, and provide an appropriate response.

Empathetic leaders must actively listen to their team, uncritically take in their constructive feedback, then take the appropriate actions to ameliorate the matter. The World Economic Forum wrote about actively listening saying, “if there is one crucial thing that the ‘Great Resignation’ or the even more recent ‘Quiet Quitting’ trend has taught us, it is that we, as leaders, have failed to listen generously to our employees.” When managers don’t actively listen to their team members, miscommunications will occur. With the best of intentions, an executive assumed an employee wanted to work remotely. The boss didn’t intently listen to the worker, and his decision backfired—the person wanted to return to work to get noticed.

A natural impulse is to be thinking about one’s own argument while the discussion partner is expressing their point of view. That doesn’t work, because you are not in a position to actively listen or consider your partner’s POV. Best approach I have found is to bite your lip and patiently listen while absorbing their key arguments, reiterate and then acknowledge their POV, and then calmly state one’s own position. Easier said than done!

The best advice I've received is to use your two ears and one mouth in proportion. The second best advice is before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

It's essential to provide empathy and execute employee-centric policies and procedures to empower workers. Being understanding, offering compassion, and taking care of workers is one of the best ways to attract, recruit and retain people. Empathy is needed in the current layoff contagion. Rather than laying off people, business leaders should consider other options such as redeploying people to other units, upskilling and training them for new assignments within the organization. Empathetic leaders will provide fair separation packages, details about health benefits, what will happen to their vacation and paid time off days, career coaching, counseling, access to recruiters, and letters of recommendation.

This is key. Often leaders are too focused on being one and forgot to emote and show empathy that we’re all humans and have needs beyond pure cold hard numbers and business goals. True leaders listen, understand, empathise and empower their teams to ensure a collective win for everyone - not just him/herself, not any individual or even a team - but the entire organisation for the greater good.

The most challenging obstacle to being empathetic is our own belief that we're right and they're wrong. True empathy comes only when you've allowed yourself to see the situation through the other person's eyes and you appreciate their point of view. Empathy doesn't mean you have to agree, but you do have to demonstrate that you understand why they feel the way they do. Until the other person believes you truly understand, s/he'll continue to push back against you as hard as you're pushing on him/her.