Effective listening is the ability to actively understand information provided by the speaker, and much more as well.

The highest form of listening we can obtain is being able to listen with empathy.

When you're mindful with your body language, you can maintain your own focus and maintain others focus on you.

The quickest way to re-center yourself and maintain focus is with organised, rational breathing, or what's known as the square breath.

If you pretend to focus, what you're focusing on is the pretending, not on the person you're listening to.

You need to be sensitive to the non-verbal message you're sending with the shape, position, orientation and arrangement of your whole body and limbs.

Another way to stay focused is to use the technique of repeating or rephrasing what we heard the other person say, before we speak.

Stay focused by staying open and transparent. Rather than fake interest, show your authentic mood.

It may sound ridiculously simple, but often the reason we fail to reach an outcome is because our focus has wavered.

Closed ended questions are designed to get very specific information from the other person.

Open questions are designed to draw out someone's opinions, feelings, and knowledge

Probing and clarifying questions are designed to give us more information on a topic we've already been discussing.

Summary questions can be a great way to honestly check that you get what the other person is telling you.

To effectively listen, we need to be willing to stop talking, draw out the other person's point of view, and really listen to what they have to say.

On a conference call participants can't see you, and you can't see them. It can be very tempting to multitask.

Here are some common sense listening tools that can be applied during face-to-face communication.

The same common sense listening tools that can be applied to individual face-to-face communication, also apply to group face-to-face meetings.

This film looks at some challenges to overcome when it comes to listening over telepresence.

Over the phone, we can't see or be seen, but listeners can hear when you lose focus.

Phil Daniels a professor of psychology is credited with devising a process called start-stop-keep that asks some valuable questions.