Friday, October 24, 2008
Active Listening
Active listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Often when people talk to each other, they don=t listen attentively. They are often distracted, half listening, half thinking about something else. When people are engaged in a conflict, they are often busy formulating a response to what is being said. They assume that they have heard what their opponent is saying many times before, so rather than paying attention, they focus on how they can respond to win the argument.
Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listener=s own words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. The listener does not have to agree with the speaker--he or she must simply state what they think the speaker said. This enables the speaker to find out whether the listener really understood. If the listener did not, the speaker can explain some more.
Often, the listener is encouraged to interpret the speaker=s words in terms of feelings. Thus, instead of just repeating what happened, the active listener might add AI gather that you felt angry or frustrated or confused when@. . .[a particular event happened]. Then the speaker can go beyond confirming that the listener understood what happened, but can indicate that he or she also understood the speaker=s psychological response to it.
Active listening has several benefits. First, it forces people to listen attentively to others. Second, it avoids misunderstandings, as people have to confirm that they do really understand what another person has said. Third, it tends to open people up, to get them to say more. When people are in conflict, they often contradict each other, denying the opponent=s description of a situation. This tends to make people defensive, and they will either lash out, or withdraw and say nothing more. However, if they feel that their opponent is really attuned to their concerns and wants to listen, they are likely to explain in detail what they feel and why. If both parties to a conflict do this, the chances of being able to develop a solution to their mutual problem becomes much greater.
Active listening is the ability to communicate to another person that you have heard and understood their situation. It requires the ability to accurately paraphrase what you think the sender is saying, incorporating the sender's facts and their feelings around a particular issue or situation that has affected them.
Active listening involves listening not only to what is said, but how it is said. This means that there should not be a discrepancy between what is said and how it is said (i.e., a match of message and its delivery). For example, if someone voices the following, "I am very angry," with a face that does not look angry, then there might be more to what is being said than the words indicate. A discrepancy suggests dissonance in feelings and actions.
Active listening also involves reaching below the surface of what is being said. Two effective ways of reaching below the surface is paying attention to the feelings and meaning of what is said. Feelings can be focused on by being empathic, while meaning can be explored by reflecting meaning.
Empathy
Empathy is a word that is often confused with sympathy. What is the difference? The dictionary defines sympathy as a "feeling or expression of pity or sorrow for the distress of another." Empathy, on the other hand, is "the explicit reflecting of the feelings of someone." When you are sympathetic you express sorrow that the person feels as she or he does, but when you empathize, you reflect the feeling back to the person. What is the purpose in doing this in a helping situation? The peer support giver identifies emotions and intensifies the feelings being experienced. In being empathic the peer support giver mirrors feelings, not opinions--for example, "you are angry" and not "you feel that he made you angry". There are many emotions that can be expressed, but it seems to us that there are five core emotions: fear, joy, anger, grief, and love. These emotions are felt in the stomach; thus, empathy is tuning into these internal reactions. Notice too, that feelings are not just an expression of emotions, but thoughts and emotions which are essentially expressed throughout the body.
Active Listening
As mentioned previously, good listening requires that you play an active role in the listening process. The tools you will need for this include PARAPHRASING, CLARIFYING, AND GIVING FEEDBACK.
PARAPHRASING
Paraphrasing means to state in your own words your understanding of what has just been said. Paraphrasing is a skill that is absolutely necessary to good listening. It gives the speaker the opportunity to find out what message he/she is getting across to you. He/she can then make any corrections needed. To begin paraphrasing, you might start out by saying "What I hear you saying is...." or "It sounds like...." or "Let me see if I'm understanding you...."
There are some benefits to paraphrasing. People deeply appreciate it when they know that the person they are talking to really understands them. It also prevents any misunderstandings from occurring. If you are prone to impulsive angry reactions, paraphrasing will help you to avoid this. You will also be distracted less easily and remember what was said more frequently.
CLARIFYING
Clarifying means asking questions until you are both confident that you have understood. Since your goal is to understand what is being said, you may need to get more historical information to accomplish that objective. Doing this also let's the other know that you are truly interested in understanding him/her.
There are two types of questions that are useful in clarifying your understanding of your partner's experience. They are YES/NO QUESTIONS and OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS:
YES/NO QUESTIONS:
This type of question involves asking a question that requires only a "YES" or "NO" response. If you use this type of question, you can expect to get a very short answer. It will NOT encourage your partner to elaborate although sometimes he/she may do so anyway. Once you have used this kind of question, you may want to follow it up with an open-ended question.
OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS:
This type of question DOES NOT seek a "YES" or "NO" response. Instead, it elicits more information from the speaker. This type of question might include:
What happened?
What else happened?
What do you mean by __________?
How did you feel when that happened?
What did you like/dislike about what happened?
Your choice of which questions to use will depend on the situation.
FEEDBACK
This part of the listening process involves sharing what happened inside you, your thoughts and feelings, with the speaker. It means sharing YOUR perception of the speaker's experience. Doing this provides another opportunity for clarification, but it may also cause the speaker to see his/her experience in a new light. In listening to someone who has just experienced traumatic event, you might be moved to say something like this: "Wow, as I've been listening to you, I've been thinking periodically just how scarey this would be to experience. I want to make the experience go away for you, but I can't. I know this is a difficult thing to talk about, but I'm hear if you want to talk some more."
Feedback must be immediate, honest and supportive of the speaker's need to share what is important to him/her. There are times, however, when you may be listening to something that is really hard to hear. This can be especially true when the speaker is sharing something that challenges your beliefs about the goodness of people and/or the safety of the world around you. It can also happen when the speaker shares somethng that is very similar to an incident from your past that you still have unresolved feelings about and that you have been trying to avoid (for more information on this, visit "Trauma Central" (also on this website), specifically the pages "About Trauma" and "About Memory").
If this occurs for you, it is important to acknowledge your own limitations in a way that respects the speaker's need to share. You might say something like this: "John, I know that it is really important for you to talk about what's happened and I want to support you in doing just that. However, I'm finding that what you need to share is too close to something I still need to work on. And because of where I'm at with that issue, I'm afraid I can't really be there for you right now. Perhaps, I can help you find someone who can. Please understand that I want to be, but I just can't right now."
The flip side of this is that as speakers, we all need to realize that there will be times when others just can't be there for us for a variety of reasons. It could be that they are simply too tired. Regardless of the reason, it is important to pad your support system with at least one (non-family) person with whom you can share anything. For some people this person will be a trusted therapist, for others a trusted friend.
Active Listening
Active listening is when a listener tries to understand both the facts and the feelings of the speaker. The listener then restates what s/he has heard to make sure s/he has heard correctly.
A good listener shows understanding through…
- tone of voice
- facial expressions
- gestures
- eye contact
- posture
- asking questions to understand
A good listener does not…
- interrupt
- offer advice
- give her/ his opinion
- bring up similar feelings or problems
- agree or disagree with what is being said
Active Listening
Listening is an “active” process that is very different than hearing. You listen to your favourite music hut you hear your Mom ask you to clean up your room.
Listening requires
Readiness - be prepared to learn by listening
Focus - look at the speaker
Connecting - connect the new information with information already learned
Active Listening involves:
Listening for the main points of what is being said.
Asking yourself questions about what the speaker is saying.
Picturing in your mind’s eye what is being talked about.
Purpose of Active Listening
·
· To understand the other person’s viewpoints fully.
· To encourage the other person to “own” his/her own problems.
· To build a positive relationship.
· To encourage growth and development.
Peter Griffiths Daily Herald Column 1977-78 Listening Is An Art Which Must Be LearnedDaily Herald May 19, 1978Listening is an art which rust be learned. It doesn't come naturally. All are born with the potential to listen; many never develop it. As Father Chuck Gallagher says in "LOVE IS A COUPLE", there is more to listening than hearing.. You hear words. You listen to people. Hearing is concerned with information. It is done for the sake of the person hearing, and what he is going to get out of it. Listening is what you do for the sake of the person you are listening to. It shows you care about that person and want to know what is happening to them.Hearing takes in information, and evaluates or judges it. Listening wants to understand another person's s point of view. It cares and accepts that what a person says is important to them. How can you become a better listener? Give your undivided attention. Suspend your own needs for the time. This is hard if you have a need to be listened to at the same time.Listen with more than your ears. Listen with your body. A listening body sits forward, leans slightly towards the person speaking and concentrates all attention on them. It doesn’t lounge back in a chair, move as far away as possible or spread its listening energy all over the room. It may feel awkward looking at someone’s eyes when the talk. But, isn’t that how they know we are really listening, when we have eye to eye communication? You can stop listening without leaving the room or moving your body. Just let your eyes wander.Watch out for being "closed" on certain topics. In some families or marriages, certain topics are purposely avoided. These might be conflict, sex or any other topics. At times, topics may be dealt with superficially. Feelings may be never touched. This often happens in marriage talks about money or sex. If a person doesn’t want to touch one of these closed topics they may become deaf to what is being said, or quickly change the subject and divert the talking away from any feeling area.A serious barrier to active listening is when you "listen with the answer running". This is unfair. You aren’t listening. You know what you are going to say, even before the other person finishes speaking. You are impatiently waiting for any pause or an excuse to jump in with your views and opinions, whether they’ve finished with what they want to say or not.Listening involves NOT jumping in with solutions to people’s problems. You don’t need to have answers to everything someone else says or asks. A relationship is not rooted or based on your having solutions to all someone’s problems or answers to all their questions. The goal of a relationship is to understand someone, to experience their feelings, and, as a result, become closer to them. This only happens if there is openness in a relationship, which comes from active and caring listening.Listening doesn’t happen naturally. It takes effort. You have to control your own thoughts from jumping ahead of you, blocking off your hearing what the other person is trying to say to you. It involves body language, eye contact, patience and self-control. You have to decide you want to listen. It is the base or foundation on which you build relationships with others. It must be learned. You must be willing to do it.
Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listener=s own words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. The listener does not have to agree with the speaker--he or she must simply state what they think the speaker said. This enables the speaker to find out whether the listener really understood. If the listener did not, the speaker can explain some more.
Often, the listener is encouraged to interpret the speaker=s words in terms of feelings. Thus, instead of just repeating what happened, the active listener might add AI gather that you felt angry or frustrated or confused when@. . .[a particular event happened]. Then the speaker can go beyond confirming that the listener understood what happened, but can indicate that he or she also understood the speaker=s psychological response to it.
Active listening has several benefits. First, it forces people to listen attentively to others. Second, it avoids misunderstandings, as people have to confirm that they do really understand what another person has said. Third, it tends to open people up, to get them to say more. When people are in conflict, they often contradict each other, denying the opponent=s description of a situation. This tends to make people defensive, and they will either lash out, or withdraw and say nothing more. However, if they feel that their opponent is really attuned to their concerns and wants to listen, they are likely to explain in detail what they feel and why. If both parties to a conflict do this, the chances of being able to develop a solution to their mutual problem becomes much greater.
Active listening is the ability to communicate to another person that you have heard and understood their situation. It requires the ability to accurately paraphrase what you think the sender is saying, incorporating the sender's facts and their feelings around a particular issue or situation that has affected them.
Active listening involves listening not only to what is said, but how it is said. This means that there should not be a discrepancy between what is said and how it is said (i.e., a match of message and its delivery). For example, if someone voices the following, "I am very angry," with a face that does not look angry, then there might be more to what is being said than the words indicate. A discrepancy suggests dissonance in feelings and actions.
Active listening also involves reaching below the surface of what is being said. Two effective ways of reaching below the surface is paying attention to the feelings and meaning of what is said. Feelings can be focused on by being empathic, while meaning can be explored by reflecting meaning.
Empathy
Empathy is a word that is often confused with sympathy. What is the difference? The dictionary defines sympathy as a "feeling or expression of pity or sorrow for the distress of another." Empathy, on the other hand, is "the explicit reflecting of the feelings of someone." When you are sympathetic you express sorrow that the person feels as she or he does, but when you empathize, you reflect the feeling back to the person. What is the purpose in doing this in a helping situation? The peer support giver identifies emotions and intensifies the feelings being experienced. In being empathic the peer support giver mirrors feelings, not opinions--for example, "you are angry" and not "you feel that he made you angry". There are many emotions that can be expressed, but it seems to us that there are five core emotions: fear, joy, anger, grief, and love. These emotions are felt in the stomach; thus, empathy is tuning into these internal reactions. Notice too, that feelings are not just an expression of emotions, but thoughts and emotions which are essentially expressed throughout the body.
Active Listening
As mentioned previously, good listening requires that you play an active role in the listening process. The tools you will need for this include PARAPHRASING, CLARIFYING, AND GIVING FEEDBACK.
PARAPHRASING
Paraphrasing means to state in your own words your understanding of what has just been said. Paraphrasing is a skill that is absolutely necessary to good listening. It gives the speaker the opportunity to find out what message he/she is getting across to you. He/she can then make any corrections needed. To begin paraphrasing, you might start out by saying "What I hear you saying is...." or "It sounds like...." or "Let me see if I'm understanding you...."
There are some benefits to paraphrasing. People deeply appreciate it when they know that the person they are talking to really understands them. It also prevents any misunderstandings from occurring. If you are prone to impulsive angry reactions, paraphrasing will help you to avoid this. You will also be distracted less easily and remember what was said more frequently.
CLARIFYING
Clarifying means asking questions until you are both confident that you have understood. Since your goal is to understand what is being said, you may need to get more historical information to accomplish that objective. Doing this also let's the other know that you are truly interested in understanding him/her.
There are two types of questions that are useful in clarifying your understanding of your partner's experience. They are YES/NO QUESTIONS and OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS:
YES/NO QUESTIONS:
This type of question involves asking a question that requires only a "YES" or "NO" response. If you use this type of question, you can expect to get a very short answer. It will NOT encourage your partner to elaborate although sometimes he/she may do so anyway. Once you have used this kind of question, you may want to follow it up with an open-ended question.
OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS:
This type of question DOES NOT seek a "YES" or "NO" response. Instead, it elicits more information from the speaker. This type of question might include:
What happened?
What else happened?
What do you mean by __________?
How did you feel when that happened?
What did you like/dislike about what happened?
Your choice of which questions to use will depend on the situation.
FEEDBACK
This part of the listening process involves sharing what happened inside you, your thoughts and feelings, with the speaker. It means sharing YOUR perception of the speaker's experience. Doing this provides another opportunity for clarification, but it may also cause the speaker to see his/her experience in a new light. In listening to someone who has just experienced traumatic event, you might be moved to say something like this: "Wow, as I've been listening to you, I've been thinking periodically just how scarey this would be to experience. I want to make the experience go away for you, but I can't. I know this is a difficult thing to talk about, but I'm hear if you want to talk some more."
Feedback must be immediate, honest and supportive of the speaker's need to share what is important to him/her. There are times, however, when you may be listening to something that is really hard to hear. This can be especially true when the speaker is sharing something that challenges your beliefs about the goodness of people and/or the safety of the world around you. It can also happen when the speaker shares somethng that is very similar to an incident from your past that you still have unresolved feelings about and that you have been trying to avoid (for more information on this, visit "Trauma Central" (also on this website), specifically the pages "About Trauma" and "About Memory").
If this occurs for you, it is important to acknowledge your own limitations in a way that respects the speaker's need to share. You might say something like this: "John, I know that it is really important for you to talk about what's happened and I want to support you in doing just that. However, I'm finding that what you need to share is too close to something I still need to work on. And because of where I'm at with that issue, I'm afraid I can't really be there for you right now. Perhaps, I can help you find someone who can. Please understand that I want to be, but I just can't right now."
The flip side of this is that as speakers, we all need to realize that there will be times when others just can't be there for us for a variety of reasons. It could be that they are simply too tired. Regardless of the reason, it is important to pad your support system with at least one (non-family) person with whom you can share anything. For some people this person will be a trusted therapist, for others a trusted friend.
Active Listening
Active listening is when a listener tries to understand both the facts and the feelings of the speaker. The listener then restates what s/he has heard to make sure s/he has heard correctly.
A good listener shows understanding through…
- tone of voice
- facial expressions
- gestures
- eye contact
- posture
- asking questions to understand
A good listener does not…
- interrupt
- offer advice
- give her/ his opinion
- bring up similar feelings or problems
- agree or disagree with what is being said
Active Listening
Listening is an “active” process that is very different than hearing. You listen to your favourite music hut you hear your Mom ask you to clean up your room.
Listening requires
Readiness - be prepared to learn by listening
Focus - look at the speaker
Connecting - connect the new information with information already learned
Active Listening involves:
Listening for the main points of what is being said.
Asking yourself questions about what the speaker is saying.
Picturing in your mind’s eye what is being talked about.
Purpose of Active Listening
·
· To understand the other person’s viewpoints fully.
· To encourage the other person to “own” his/her own problems.
· To build a positive relationship.
· To encourage growth and development.
Peter Griffiths Daily Herald Column 1977-78 Listening Is An Art Which Must Be LearnedDaily Herald May 19, 1978Listening is an art which rust be learned. It doesn't come naturally. All are born with the potential to listen; many never develop it. As Father Chuck Gallagher says in "LOVE IS A COUPLE", there is more to listening than hearing.. You hear words. You listen to people. Hearing is concerned with information. It is done for the sake of the person hearing, and what he is going to get out of it. Listening is what you do for the sake of the person you are listening to. It shows you care about that person and want to know what is happening to them.Hearing takes in information, and evaluates or judges it. Listening wants to understand another person's s point of view. It cares and accepts that what a person says is important to them. How can you become a better listener? Give your undivided attention. Suspend your own needs for the time. This is hard if you have a need to be listened to at the same time.Listen with more than your ears. Listen with your body. A listening body sits forward, leans slightly towards the person speaking and concentrates all attention on them. It doesn’t lounge back in a chair, move as far away as possible or spread its listening energy all over the room. It may feel awkward looking at someone’s eyes when the talk. But, isn’t that how they know we are really listening, when we have eye to eye communication? You can stop listening without leaving the room or moving your body. Just let your eyes wander.Watch out for being "closed" on certain topics. In some families or marriages, certain topics are purposely avoided. These might be conflict, sex or any other topics. At times, topics may be dealt with superficially. Feelings may be never touched. This often happens in marriage talks about money or sex. If a person doesn’t want to touch one of these closed topics they may become deaf to what is being said, or quickly change the subject and divert the talking away from any feeling area.A serious barrier to active listening is when you "listen with the answer running". This is unfair. You aren’t listening. You know what you are going to say, even before the other person finishes speaking. You are impatiently waiting for any pause or an excuse to jump in with your views and opinions, whether they’ve finished with what they want to say or not.Listening involves NOT jumping in with solutions to people’s problems. You don’t need to have answers to everything someone else says or asks. A relationship is not rooted or based on your having solutions to all someone’s problems or answers to all their questions. The goal of a relationship is to understand someone, to experience their feelings, and, as a result, become closer to them. This only happens if there is openness in a relationship, which comes from active and caring listening.Listening doesn’t happen naturally. It takes effort. You have to control your own thoughts from jumping ahead of you, blocking off your hearing what the other person is trying to say to you. It involves body language, eye contact, patience and self-control. You have to decide you want to listen. It is the base or foundation on which you build relationships with others. It must be learned. You must be willing to do it.
