1. Listening Skills

2. Attending Skills What are attending skills? Body language
Asking questions
Avoid making noises
Occasionally respond (head nod, mmmhumm, OK, etc)
Pay attention to the speakers body language

3. You are not using attending skills if you interrupt or finish sentences for the speaker.

4. At your table discuss
Write down an example of a time (or times) when you have felt that the person you were talking to wasn’t listening. How did that make you feel?
How did you know they weren’t listening?

5. Reflective Skills What are reflective skills?
Checking with the speaker to see if you understand what he/she is saying.
Summarize what the person who is speaking just said to you.

6. Examples of Reflective Listening:
”If I understand you correctly, you are saying that…”
“Sounds like things didn’t go well for you”

7. Understanding the heart of what the speaker is saying:
To use the reflective skills to understand the behavior of the speaker, you can suggest your own interpretation of the behaviors.
Ex: pay attention to body language, and comment on it.

8. For example: your client is glancing at the clock a lot
For example: your client is glancing at the clock a lot. You might ask “I notice that you keep looking at the clock. Is there somewhere that you need to be?

9. Body Language Assessment:
Why would someone be moving their body around a lot during conversation?
Why would someone have a hard time maintaining eye contact?
Why would someone talk softly about a particular topic?
Why would someone stop talking altogether?

10. Introspect
In order to be able to reflect back what the person is saying, you can put yourself in the speakers position, and ask yourself “how would I feel in her/her place?”

11. Ask Questions for Clarification
If the speaker seems confused you could ask:
“You look puzzled. Can I clear up some confusion?”
So basically, you are feeling uncertain of your plans?

12. Paying Attention
To listen to a speaker with your full attention, you must listen to the words and pay attention to the behavior, body language, emotion, or feelings of the speaker.

13. Incongruence
What do you do when the feelings, body language or voice expressions do not match the verbal message, this is called incongruence.

14. Reflective listening is an important skill because it helps the listener decipher unclear messages.
As the listener, you have to decide when reflective listening is appropriate and when it is not.

15. Listening Obstacles
What are some obstacles that can interfere with listening reflectively?
Listeners judgmental thoughts
Judgmental responses

16. Examples of listening Obstacles:
Having to be right
Dismissing the speakers needs
Giving advice
Discounting emotions or thoughts
Comparing unfavorably

17. Clarifying Questions:
What are clarifying questions?
Questions asked to gain further insight.
What clarification questions might you need to ask in response to the following:
Your teacher says to you “Bring those papers on psychological research statistics to my classroom Tuesday”

18. Ways to improve your listening skills
Review the worksheet and discuss at your table the areas you need to improve on.