Listening

Time: 2 hours

Source:

Purpose: Participants will explore how important listening is to effective communication. They will also explore how listening will be important part of being a leader and communication is key component to building a We Lead! community.

Directions: Have participants fill out Blocks to Communication and Trust Building (handout).

Discuss their responses. Possible discussion questions are:

• What are the three most often chosen blocks?
• Why do you feel they are the most important?
• How might you improve in those areas?

To illustrate what happens when someone is not listening, complete Listening Exercise #1, role played in pairs. Explain that the purpose of this exercise is not to listen to the other person and to concentrate on getting your point of view across as quickly as possible.

Break the group into pairs. From Listening Exercise #1 Role Play Descriptions (handout) give one participant in each pair a slip of paper describing the situation for the person who needs an air conditioner repaired; give the other participant a slip of paper describing the situation for the plumbing and heating employee.

Give the pairs about two minutes to study their roles and to decide what they are going to say.

Have all the participants begin at the same time, and allow them to interact for about four minutes before you stop them. Be sure participants in each pair are not listening to one another.

Following the role play, bring the group back together as a large group to identify some of the characteristics of not listening (loud voices, no eye contact) and how the pairs felt when they were not listened to (angry, frustrated, helpless, desperate).

Discuss the importance of listening and how we tend to lose that skill as we get older. We tend to think of what we want to say next or what we are feeling rather than listening carefully to the speaker.

Using How to Be a Good Listener (handout), describe the following strategies to be a better listener:

• Block out distractions. Concentrate on what the other person is saying in spite of the background noise, uncomfortable seats, or preoccupation with your own thoughts.

• Think while you listen. Good listening requires much more than passively letting sound waves enter your ears. It requires active involvement such as identifying the speaker's most important points and relating them to your own ideas and experiences.

• Avoid responding in a manner that closes communication.

Examples of such responses are the following:

Evaluation: “You’re wrong."

Advice: " Why don't you..."

Direction: " You have to...”

Moralizing: “You should..."

Discounting: " You think your problem is bad, you should hear about mine."

These responses make people feel defensive and put down.

• Let the speaker know you are still " with" him/her. You can do this by nodding, maintaining eye contact, not interrupting and making sounds such as " uh huh."

• Ask questions that invite the speaker to say more. An example is, “What did it feel like for you to walk into that room full of strangers? " or “How did you get interested in that subject? "

• Restate the speaker’s words and feelings in your own words. An example is, “It sounds like you feel angry about missing the game, " or” If I heard you right; you said you would rather not go to 'R' rated movies. Is that what you meant? "

• Respect the speaker's right to feel the way he/she feels and to think the way he/she thinks. This does not mean you can't disagree. But it does mean you should not put down, ridicule, berate or belittle a person for thinking or feeling a certain way. Examples of disrespectful responses are, " That’s so stupid! How could you think that? " “You shouldn't feel that way, " and, " Well, nobody else sees it that way so you must be wrong."