1. SKILLS OF ACTIVE LISTENING

2. Microskills Hierarchy
Encouraging, paraphrasing, and summarizing
Client observation skills
Open and closed questions
Attending behavior
Ethics and multicultural competence

3. Active Listening Walk in other person’s shoes
Allow helpee to feel heard
Helper does not add ideas; says back to helpees what you have heard using their key words

4. Encouragers
Verbal and nonverbal means to indicate to helpee to keep talking
Head nods
“Uh-huh”

5. Paraphrasing Feeds back to helpee essence of what has just been said
Helps clarify
Is not parroting
“Sounds like . . .”

6. Summarizations Similar to paraphrases but covers more content
Can be used at beginning and end of session
Helps organize what is happening in interview

7. Non-Judgmental Attitude
Listening to helpee without imposing your own value system
Suspending (not dispensing with) one’s own judgment
Hear and accept what helpees are saying in their stories
Visuals, vocals, verbal following and body language need to be congruent with nonjudgmental stance
Allows helpee a safe place to explore without which no change is possible

8. Reflection of Feeling
Names or feeds back the emotional tone of the conversation or story to the helpee.
Similar to a paraphrase but focus is on emotion rather than content or facts of story
A “feelings word” vocabulary is important

9. Diversity Issues May use listening skills more to establish trust
If used exclusively, helpee may become suspicious; self-disclose
Gender differences:
Females more paraphrasing, etc.
Males more questions