SYLLABUS
CALENDAR
ASSIGNMENTS
NOTES
Active (Empathic) Listening
- Desire to be other-directed, rather than to project one's own feelings and ideas onto the other
- Desire to be non-defensive, rather than to protect the self. When the self is being protected, it is difficult to focus on another person.
- Desire to imagine the roles, perspectives, or experiences of the other, rather than assuming they are the same as one's own
- Desire to listen as a receiver, not as a critic, and desire to understand the other person rather than to achieve either agreement from or change in that
| Listening Skill | SKILLS EXPLANATION |
| Attending, acknowledging | Providing verbal or non- verbal awareness of the other, i.e., eye contact |
| Restating, paraphrasing | Responding to person's basic verbal message |
| Reflecting | Reflecting feelings, experiences, or content that has been heard or perceived through cues |
| Interpreting | Offering a tentative interpretation about the other's feelings, desires, or meanings |
| Summarizing, synthesizing | Bringing together in some way feelings and experiences; providing a focus |
| Probing | Questioning in a supportive way that requests more information or that attempts to clear up confusions |
| Giving feedback | Sharing perceptions of the other's ideas or feelings; disclosing relevant personal information |
| Supporting | Showing warmth and caring in one's own individual way |
| Checking perceptions | Finding out if interpretations and perceptions are valid and accurate |
| Being quiet | Giving the other time to think as well as to talk |
SOURCE: Pickering, Marisue, "Communication" in EXPLORATIONS, A Journal of Research of the University of Maine, Vol. 3, No. 1, Fall 1986, pp 16-19.
These skills, like those of self-expression, can be learned, practiced, and mastered. Our society places much more attention on the spoken side of the communication equation, but if you think about who influences you, are they good talkers or good listeners? As we come to understand ourselves and our relationships with others better, we rediscover that "communication is not just saying words; it is creating true understanding."
Exercises. – Three people/roles – speaker, listener, and observer
– switch places after reports.
1. Use of “encouragers” – body posture, stance/movements
- body language, verbal encouragers, conduct of eyes
2. Use of question as a listening skill; reflecting, summarization
Communicating that we are listening:
• a. Non-verbal attending: eye contact, body language, use of silence,
verbal attending i.e. minimal encouragers
• b. The art of questions Open questions: how? what? could? would?
Closed questions: is? are? do? did? Why questions: sometimes open, sometimes
closed
• c. Focus--be aware that the conversation may take on a variety
of focuses: speaker focus topic focus other(s) focus, listener focus
• d. Reflections: reinforce and support the speaker clarify the
meaning of communications reflect factual content reflect feeling content
under-reflected vs. distorted reflections leave reflections tentative
• e. Summary: recapitulation for easier remembering, better understanding,
showing relationship of main points: beginning discussion (remembering
where we left off) summarizing in mid-discussion, drawing together main
points, ending a discussion, a sense of what happened
Summary of effective self-expression
• a. Sharing information--the basis for expression: Information:
from other sources from our experiences based on our beliefs based on
our feelings based on our wants
• b. Using first-person pronoun--making "I" statements
• c. Factual self-expression vs. feeling self-expression
• d. Keeping the focus and avoiding "topic jumps"
• e. Using past-present-future tenses in self expression
• f. Encouraging others to see themselves with clarity-- confrontation
g. Giving directions--achieving clarity
• h. Summarizing--its uses in self-expression
Credits for contributions to this material include:
• Lois M. Frey, UVM Extension, RR #4, Box 2298, Montpelier, VT 05602,
(802) 223-2389, email: lfrey@sover.net