Active listening to understand and be understood

Goals

• Discover and use the principles of active listening
• Evaluate and develop your listening skills
• Improve your relational efficiency when communicating one-on-one or in a group

Target audience

Anyone wishing to better understand the others and to improve his/her listening capacity in professional relations

Prerequisite

None

Contents

Active listening and its challenges

• The meaning of “active listening”; some ideas by Carl Rogers
• Why use active listening? Diagram, funnel and traps of communication
• Active listening limiters: sensory filters, representations, sorting information
• The different levels of listening

Prepare yourself: setting up the right conditions for high quality listening

• Prepare and master the different stages of an interview
• Setting up the ideal conditions for optimal listening
• Define and communicate the basic rules
• Create a confidential relationship and maintain it

Active listening in practice

• Put into practice the principles of active listening: be there for the other, give proof of empathy
• Make a difference between fact, opinion, feeling and judgement
• Find a balance between listening and taking notes; remain available for the other, show you are listening
• Listen to what is said: verbal communication, use of vocabulary
• Observe and listen to what is not being said: paralinguistic and non-verbal elements
• Manage your emotions and welcome those of the other
• Recognise and avoid the pitfalls of bad listening

Make sure you understood well; reformulate and give feedback; come to a conclusion

• Use different types of questioning
• Use the right type of reformulation
• Ask validation of your understanding of the issue(s)
• React and respond
• Close positively and follow up