LISTENING

 Active Listening

 Think back to those few friends, mentors, counselors, or family members who have had the biggest impact on you.  How would you characterize the communication between you?  Was it helpful,

meaningful, telepathic, or inspirational?

     In one-to-one relationships with someone who knows us well, we are often in such complete synchronization that communication flows between us almost without words.  Or so we feel.  If this is the case, is it because we excel at expressing ourselves, or because we are masters of listening?  Naturally, both are important, but, to turn a phrase, talk is cheap and listening is rare.

     Chances are that those who influence us most are powerful listeners.  Whether instinctively or through practice, they have developed the skill of empathy.

     A University of Maine researcher, Dr. Marisue Pickering, identifies four characteristics of empathetic listeners:

l. Desire to be other-directed, rather than to project one's own feelings and ideas onto the other.

2. 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.

3. Desire to imagine the roles, perspectives, or experiences of the other, rather than assuming they are the same as one's own.

4. 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 person.

     Further, she identifies ten discrete skills for empathetic listening, shown in Table 1.

Table 1.  Skills Associated with Empathy

SKILLS                                                      EXPLANATION

1.  Attending, acknowledging                 1.  Providing verbal or non-verbal awareness of the other, ie, eye contact

2.  Restating, paraphrasing                    2.  Responding to person's basic verbal message

3.  Reflecting                                          3.  Reflecting feelings, experiences, or content that has been heard or

                                                                 perceived through cues

4.  Interpreting                                        4.  Offering a tentative interpretation about the other's feelings, desires,

                                                                or meanings

5.  Summarizing, synthesizing               5.  Bringing together in some way feelings and experiences; providing

                                                                a focus

6.  Probing                                               6.  Questioning in a supportive way that requests more information or that

                                                                attempts to clear up confusions

7.  Giving feedback                                7.  Sharing perceptions of the  other's ideas or feelings; disclosing relevant

                                                                personal information

8.  Supporting                                         8.  Showing warmth and caring in one's own individual way

9.  Checking perceptions                         9.  Finding out if interpretations and perceptions are valid and accurate

10.  Being quiet                                      10.  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."  Active listening is an

important skill in that process.

                        LISTENING SKILLS

Notes to leaders who wish to place greater emphasis on active

listening skills and effective self-expression:

     Using the materials from The Interactive Skills Program, Dalva

Hedlund and L. Bryn Freedman, Cornell University Cooperative

Extension Service, l981, provides participants with background on

communication skills noted in the following outline and the

excercises that follow:

1. Communicating that we are listening:

     a. Non-verbal attending: eye contact

                              body language

                              use of silence

          verbal attending:   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

2. 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

     i. Structuring purposeful interaction

   Activities for Developing Interactive Communication Skills

     Use the directions on the sheets that follow to practice some

of the basic active listening skills:

                    1) Attending Skills (verbal and non-verbal)

                    2) Questions, Reflections, Summarization

                    3) Skills of Self-Expression: "1-2-3 Pattern"

                    4) Practice Session on Effective Confrontation