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Active Listening: You Can Be a Great Listener (Udemy.com)

Improve your reactive habits, define your listening mindset, amplify your curiosity, & add value as a great listener

4.5
58,983 reviews

Created by: Lauren Powers

Last updated July 2025

Our take

Based on the ratings of 58,983 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in July 2025. No course pays to be reviewed.

Lauren Powers is a Master Certified Coach who has taught listening for twenty years, and the course is her short, practical take on it. It runs about 2.3 hours across 44 lectures in 11 sections, with 11 quizzes along the way. Topics move from automatic listening habits to mindsets, Level Two listening, noticing body language and emotion, reflecting back, empathy, and finally asking questions. It is pitched at all levels, and the only requirement is wanting to listen better. The audience leans toward working adults dealing with colleagues, direct reports and the boss.

Reviewers like how brief each lesson is and how practical the exercises feel. Two mention the AI-assisted practice, and one calls the teacher funny and deep at the same time. A corporate reviewer found the topics highly relatable to workplace communication gaps. The complaints are small. Two three-star reviewers felt it ran long, and one asked for it to be split into modules. One reviewer found the role play somewhat challenging as a non-native English speaker and wished the references to the author's book had been left out. Most of the roughly 59,000 ratings are four or five stars.

The course was last updated in July 2025, so it is reasonably fresh, though listening skills do not date quickly anyway. With more than 126,000 students and a 4.5 rating, it is a safe first look at the topic. It is a starting point, not a coaching program, so real change depends on practicing in actual conversations. Worth a try for anyone who wants a short, usable toolkit. Those after academic depth should look elsewhere.

Best forManagers and office workers who want a quick, practical fix for how they listen at work, including with direct reports and the boss.
Skip it ifYou want deep research or long theory, or you would rather not hear about the instructor's own book.

Pros

  • 44 short lectures across about 2.3 hours, and reviewers like the brevity
  • Practical exercises, including AI-assisted practice that reviewers found engaging
  • Covers reflecting back, noticing emotion and five powerful questions
  • Workplace focus on direct reports, bosses and communication gaps

Cons

  • Two three-star reviewers found it too long; one wanted it split into modules
  • Role play was somewhat challenging for one non-native English speaker
  • Keeps pointing to the author's book, which one reviewer disliked
The teacher is funny and very deep, at the same time. The course is really well structured, and the exercises with the help of A.I. are engaging and interesting.
PAOLO SCOLAMACCHIA, a student

Suits beginners and working professionals alike, with no prerequisite beyond wanting to listen better.

Featured in our guide: The 10 Best Communication Skills Courses on Udemy in 2026

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What you will learn

  • Identify & overcome common habits of reacting (that are not really listening!)
  • Shift attention from your own thoughts over to the speaker (for that’s what the speaker cares about!)
  • Develop, & practice, observing the speaker’s words and energy (as they are communicating so much!)
  • Use simple “starter” phrases to reflect back (because then the speaker trusts you really are listening)
  • Improve your ability to notice a speaker’s emotions (so they feel you “get it” and understand them)
  • Unleash your natural curiosity with powerful questions (that expand clarity, value, and connection)

Course content

11 sections · 44 lectures · 2.3 hours of video 11 quizzes, 1 practice test

  1. 1Why Active Listening? 4 free previews5 lectures · 13 min
  2. 2Automatic Listening Habits4 lectures · 1 quiz · 15 min
  3. 3Mindsets3 lectures · 1 quiz · 10 min
  4. 4Level Two Listening4 lectures · 1 quiz · 19 min
  5. 5Noticing All the Treasure4 lectures · 1 quiz · 15 min
  6. 6Reflecting Back5 lectures · 1 quiz · 14 min
  7. 7Helpful Habits 1 free preview4 lectures · 1 quiz · 11 min
  8. 8Developing Empathy4 lectures · 1 quiz · 14 min
  9. 9Asking Questions4 lectures · 1 quiz · 11 min
  10. 10Helpful Curiosity4 lectures · 1 quiz · 11 min

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • People who want to:
  • Reduce the number of frustrating situations & conversations they face
  • Increase the chances of satisfying collaboration, learning, & connecting
  • Manage successful interactions with both direct reports and the boss

What you need before you start

  • Wanting to become a great listener is all that’s needed

How it compares

Against the other 392 rated Udemy courses in Communication Skills on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.5 out of 5higher than 42% of them
  • Reviews58,983#5 of 393 by number of reviews
  • Length2.3 hourslonger than 56% of them
  • Last updatedJuly 2025earlier than 51% of them

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Course Description

Most of us want to get better at talking. But the REAL power tool for influencing others, leading, collaborating, having an impact, and being an an-all-around-better person is Active Listening. While regular listening can look like being blank and silent, Active Listening is engaged, creative, and responsive.

In this course, you will gain both the internal awareness and external skill-set that are the foundation of Active Listening. You will be able to have far more satisfying, interesting, successful conversations.

I created this practical  Udemy course for you--filled with my unique insights from starting out as a terrible listener to now being a professional listener, a Master Certified Coach. I’ve been teaching people how to listen actively for twenty years now and these skills are both learnable and priceless. My course is packed with real-world examples that demystify and simplify what to pay attention to so you can be a great listener.

Good News!

  • You can interrupt!

  • You can have short (not drawn-out & boring) conversations!

  • You do not have to provide answers or fixes or expertise!

  • You don’t have to even like your conversation partner!

Selfishly, I have found that being a great Active Listener makes other people more interesting. We’ll all be more fascinated with each other if we have more great listeners in the world.

Come join in the fun!

CPE (Continuing Professional Education)

Learning Objectives

  1. Define active listening.

  2. Distinguish between Level 1 and Level 2 listening.

  3. Describe the mindset behind active listening.

  4. Explain behaviors that lead to active listening.

  5. Recognize non-verbal cues that provide additional information when communicating.

  6. Describe the importance of reflecting back and ways to do so.

  7. Identify 5 Powerful Questions for deeper listening.

For additional information, including refunds and complaints, please see Udemy Terms of Use, which is linked from the footer of this page.

For more information regarding administrative policies, please contact our support using the Help and Support link at the bottom of this page.
Read More All Levels All Levels product length iconTime: 2.3h

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Instructor Details

Lauren Powers

Lauren Powers is a Master Certified Coach, a designation only 4% of all accredited coaches achieve.  For 20+ years she has coached executives inside a range of organizations--from big tech and finance firms to non-profits, from government agencies to individual entrepreneurs.  All over the world, she offers programs in leadership development, team collaboration, and mindset growth.

How to Listen Out Loud is her most recent book, an amazon bestseller, where she invites readers to play full out in uncovering how intriguing our fellow humans truly are.  Lauren is also the author of The Trouble with Thinking a guide to how our perceptions create our realities. Since 1998, she has been on faculty with the Co-Active Training Institute where she leads the entire curriculum for training professional coaches. 

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Reviews

4.5

58,983 ratings on Udemy

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By Nigel Orrell on 9/8/2026

I enjoyed the enthusiasm of the presenter but found the course content too long.

By RAZVAN VIERU on 8/25/2026

A great and insightful training on active listening. It gives some food for thought on perspectives you didn't consider, but also little things you were already doing but not realizing you were practicing them.

By Michelle Dominguez on 8/24/2026

This is the best course I´ve experienced in a long time, not just on Udemy! I´m so appreciative of the content, how brief each interaction is, and specially, how practical the resources are. They´re next level! Thank you.

By ALESSANDRA RIGHI on 8/20/2026

I found the role play very interesting and helpful, although it was somewhat challenging for non-native English speakers. Overall, the course was engaging and well designed. However, I think the references to the author's book could have been avoided.

By Vinaya Kumar on 8/6/2026

A good course. The topics covered are practical and highly relatable to the corporate industry. The course discusses the challenges faced by professionals within an organization due to communication gaps. I recommend this course to those who work in the corporate industry.

By Rogerio Freitas on 6/30/2026

Curso muito extenso. Poderia ser mais suscinto ou dividido em módulos.

By Banele Dlamini on 6/17/2026

This course was amazing, it helped me realise I was a level one listener. But now I am surely a level two listener who won`t be focusing on their ME channel. All thanks to Lauren, Udemy, and Sappi Southern Africa for giving me an opportunity to enroll in this course.

By Maria Nikolaidou on 6/16/2026

Who knew there were two levels of listening? It was a great course, well delivered with the right level of enthusiasm and engagement. The exercises were great and I will definitely need a little cheat sheet until I get into the habit of asking the right questions and saying the right thing in order to be a good listener.

By Nyakaisiki Nunu on 5/30/2026

I love the exercises where I have to speak to another person. Listening is not as easy as I thought. This course is helping me become a better listener and I'm able to catch myself when my judging self shows up in conversations. A simple but powerful course. Thank you!

By Nam Hai on 5/18/2026

This course is amazing. As a Level One listener who knows nothing about active listening, I've finally got an idea of what I should do and practice in order to become a true listener. Thank you so much, Lauren!

By Martin Dolejsi on 11/22/2020

I wonder if such courses can be universal in different cultures. I sometime felt like this is totally not appropriate in the conversation I imagined.
I like the part about curiosity, emotions and judgement.
On the other hand the reflecting back was to artificial. I found "methods" that suits me better than proposed sentences, and I definitely don't reflect so often as proposed here.

By Doris Villegas on 11/22/2020

its a good match

Showing 12 of 99 reviews

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Overall Score : 90 / 100

Active Listening: You Can Be a Great Listener
Visit course on Udemy Write a review
  • Video Duration: icon 2.3h
  • Price: $15.99
  • Provider: icon Udemy
  • Updated: icon July 2025
  • Level: All Levels All Levels
  • Language: icon English
  • Certificate: icon Yes
  • Lectures:44 in 11 sections
  • Practice:11 quizzes, 1 practice test
  • Students:126,900
  • Subtitles:31 languages
  • Udemy badge:Bestseller
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