If you ask people about if they are a good listener or not, you will probably get most of the answers yes. But in reality, you will find many of them are not actually good at listening. I used to wonder thinking 'where's the gap then?' We have a general understanding that we are good at listening, giving priority to what others are saying, and valuing their opinion. But this is not always true.
So the question is, how to know if we are good at listening and listen actively?
If you find yourself don't interrupt in conversation, don't rush to respond, listen to the inflections and observe their emotions then you surely are a good listener. Active listening is not a tough thing. We just need the intention to give it a priority.
And we only can do that if we know how it can help us.
Active listening gives you clues to what people are really into. Many times a person doesn't express in words what they really want to or meant to. But their expressions and emotions can show that clearly. Active listening not only includes listening to them but also observing. This process helps to build a good connection, we can decide better how to help on the basis of our understanding from the conversation.
Moreover, this is a basic social skill, and we all should have this. It's really unfortunate that we don't feel the need for it that much and we have a misconception that we are good at listening. Questing ourselves and noticing our response can help us decide about our stat on the basis of this. And practicing this in our daily life can help us build this as a habit.