Improve Listening Skills
Improve your effectiveness as a trainer by polishing up your listening skills. Use this activity with your trainers to help them bring your listening skills up to speed.
1 - Focus
Some experts say that we retain only about 20% of what we hear. So listening becomes a real challenge if we are trying to relate to others effectively or are trying to do our job well. We know it’s a challenge because the average person thinks four times faster than they talk or hear another person talking. This gives the average person 45 seconds out of every minute for their mind to drift off and think about anything other than what the other person is saying.
Listening effectively means really wanting to listen before responding to what is being said.
We often don’t consciously pay full attention to others who are communicating with us. We take our cues from the setting or the circumstances, a person’s role, a person’s relationship to us, personality style, or their knowledge on an issue. Hence, in familiar situations, we hear what we expect to hear.
QUESTION:
What are some tactics you can use to improve your listening skills, even in familiar situations?
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A short verbal comment is another way of properly attending to and opening communication with others. Examples of various opening questions include:
“What’s on your mind?”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“What do you think about all this?”
“How are you feeling?”
“What’s happened since our last meeting?”
You can encourage the other person to “open up” by using short responses that indicate that they should continue the story or develop the point they are making. Practice using various kinds of minimal responses such as “go on,” “I see,” “yeah,” “mm-hmm” that encourage others to clarify their feelings, views and opinions.
QUESTION:
Can you think of more minimal responses that can be used to reflect active listening?
Most people prefer to be listened to by a person who is warm and attentive than someone who is cold and distant. Be sure to observe and identify the feeling (e.g. happy, angry, confused, sad, scared) and the strength of feeling (e.g. strong or weak) being shown by the speaker. Find a few words that capture the essence of what the other person is feeling (I sense that you are really annoyed or I sense that you feel sad). Use these words as a response to check how accurately you are perceiving the other person. Feedback from the speaker can confirm your perception (Yes, that’s exactly how I feel), or can indicate that your perception needs to be modified (That’s not quite right, I feel very angry and frustrated).
Every good listener has a positive and accepting attitude to what is being said (and shows that they are relating to what is being said). They also show sensitivity by indicating that they accept the other person’s standpoint, even if they do not agree with it.
Try to understand what the speaker has been saying at the level they have expressed it and show that you understand and accept the speaker’s feelings and experience. That way, you will be able to encourage people to open up to you more fully.
QUESTION:
Talk about additional tactics that trainers can use to identify with listeners’ feelings and intensions.
4 - Feel.
EMPATHY vs. SYMPATHY
“Empathy is understanding that someone needs a double whiskey.
Sympathy is buying them one.”
SYMPATHY: I feel what you are feeling.
EMPATHY: I understand how you are feeling.
APATHY: I don’t care how you feel.
Both verbal and non-verbal messages will influence the success of the communication process. Non-verbal signals and body language include: eye contact (steady or interrupted glance), body orientation (facing squarely toward or away from another person), posture (rigid or relaxed body, lowered or raised head, posture shifts), gestures (nodding, turning, pointing, shaking, smiling, a wrinkled nose, protruded lips), and body movements (shrugs, foot movements).
QUESTION:
Can you list more non-verbal clues that can be used for successful listening?
People tend to pay attention to and comprehend only a small percentage of the information that is directed at them. Listening needs to be an active process, not a passive process. Listen specifically in order to identify the main points being made by the speaker.
Paraphrasing is repeating back to the speaker the essence of their main ideas, thoughts, and issues. It is not about parroting back exactly what the speaker has said, but it helps to repeat the most important words stressed by the speaker. Paraphrasing gives the speaker an opportunity to explore the issues, establish new connections, and provide more detail. It is a technique that enables you to bring together the threads of the speaker’s message.
A good listener focuses on feelings as well as thoughts. While paraphrasing is concerned with thoughts, reflecting the feelings of the speaker is focused on emotions. Understanding the speaker’s feelings provides a basis for understanding the speaker’s attitudes, beliefs, and decisions. To reflect feelings, you will need to learn words that label emotions and their intensity.
QUESTION:
Can you think of some “feelings” words to help describe and reflect an understanding of speakers’ attitudes? (Ideas for classroom discussion follow.)
• happy (excited, cheerful, content)
• sad (hopeless, upset, lost)
• angry (furious, annoyed, put out)
• scared (fearful, insecure, unsure)
• confused (troubled, disorganized, undecided)
• strong (powerful, confident, secure)
• weak (overwhelmed, helpless, shaky).
To reflect feelings:
• Use the pronoun “you”
• Use the word or words that describe the emotion
• Use a “stem” sentence such as “You seem to feel …,” or “It sounds like you feel …”
• Add a context or situation “You feel angry when your boss criticizes”
By checking that you have accurately understood what is being communicated, you will be better able to decide on an appropriate response (solve the problem, ignore it, or stop it from happening in the future). It is also important to recognize that differ
6 - Finish.
Your listening habits reflect how you listen to others. Good listeners avoid the barriers and adopt positive habits.
Take a personal inventory: How do you rate yourself as a listener? What percentage of each day do you spend listening? How do others (your manager, co-workers, direct reports, spouse/lover, children, friends) rate you as a listener? How do you rate others as listeners?
How committed are you to taking action and improving your listening?
QUESTION:
As a group, work through the following listening habits:
•List your five best listening habits (e.g., making good eye contact, asking questions for clarification).
•List three of your worst listening habits (e.g., jumping to conclusions, losing your temper).
•List two good listening habits that you would like to have that you don’t have now.
•List two poor listening habits that you would like to avoid.