Activelistening

Active Listening

John Pisapiawww.johnpisapia.com

W h y ? - Assumptions

Listening is the single most important communication skill:

It is more than hearing…

Hearing you try to pick up audible sounds,

Listening you try to understandThe problem is that it is hard to listen when we are engaged in

a heated battle about "who's right and who's wrong!" Our normal way of thinking divides, organizes and labels. Because our egos become identified with how we think things are, we often find ourselves defending our positions against those of others. This makes it difficult for us to stay open to new and alternative views of reality. 2www.thestrategicleader.org

Why? The Problem

Perception is an individual’s view of reality!

When something I do or think

Is not known or understood by the

other person

Two Separate Thoughts are Created About the Same Event

A Misperception is

Created!

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Dialogue

Discussion

To inquire to learn To tell, sell, persuade

To unfold shared meaning

To gain agreement on one meaning

To integrate multiple perspectives

To evaluate and select the best

To uncover and examine assumptions

To justify/defend assumptions

W H AT Key Concept

DIALOGUE rather than Discussion

To understand our problem with perceptions - It is often useful to contrast Dialogue with a more familiar form of communication, Discussion.

In Dialogue we do not try to convince others of our points of view. There is no emphasis on winning, but rather on learning, collaboration and the synthesis of points of view.

In discussion we throw our opinions back and forth in an attempt to convince each other of the rightness of a particular point of view. In this process, the whole view is often fragmented and shattered into many pieces. 

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W H AT - The Model

Active Listening

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Active listening focuses entirely on the speaker's content and nonverbal clues. and then reflects back to the person what has been heard. Three skills:

Reflecting Content - understanding the meaning of the message by elaborating, clarifying, and reframing responses to clear up confusion or create common understandings.

Reflecting Feeling - Listening sensitively to expressed and unexpressed feelings, in order to create a sense of trust between the speaker and the listener.

Summarizing - Pulling ideas together and restating suggestions after discussion, then sending up trial balloons to see if nearing conclusion or agreement has been reached. Summarize what you think the other person has been saying and obtain his or her reaction periodically during the communication episode.

ACTIVITY #1 Review the active listening skills. When we ask the following questions or making the following statements which of the active listening skills are we demonstrating?

"You seem to be saying." "Are you saying?" "Did I hear you right, what you said was . . . ?" "My attention wondered on the last point--can you hit me again with it." "You seem upset with something, have I said something to offend you?" "What you are saying now is . . . What I heard you say five minutes ago was . . . Can you clarify the difference in these two statements for me? Or, do they mean the same thing?" "Your last statement suggested that you didn't have a clear idea of what I said. Can you repeat it to me?" "Let's review the alternatives and what do you think are the strengths of each?" "Let me see if I can summarize the main points I heard you say . . . Do you have anything else to add?" "Here's what I heard you say . . . " "I hear you saying . . . " "Before we proceed, let me check on whether I really understand that . . . " "Let me run that one through the machine again." "What I got from that was, . . . Is that the whole idea?" "Can you summarize what we've been discussing for the past five minutes?" "I need to check to see that we are both saying the same thing before we proceed to the next issue. Would you summarize our agreement to this point?" "You know I have had similar feelings about it." 'Hey, you look happy all of a sudden."6www.thestrategicleader.org

Ta ke a w a y s

the way we listen, has a lot to do with our capacity to

learn and build quality relationships with others. The combination of inquiry, assumption identification, suspension of judgment, and reflection enables us to learn, to think creatively, and to build on past experience (versus simply repeating the same patterns over and over again).

.

How?

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Inquiry elicits

information.

Inquiry requires learning how to ask questions. Learning is accelerated when we learn to ask questions which begin with "I wonder...", "what if....", "what does xxx mean to you?" As we ask these types of questions and listen, we gain greater awareness into our own and others' thinking processes and the issues that separate and unites

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h o w ? Key Concepts

Assumption Identification

As we listen we must perceive the meaning of what we are hearing at both at the individual group level. What assumptions are we hearing? which ones are shared? Which ones are driving a position or point of view?

• by identifying our assumptions and other people’s assumptions we can identify where there are disconnects in our strategies, explore differences with others, work to build common ground and consensus, and get to the bottom of core misunderstandings and differences.

•

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T a k e a w a y s

Suspension of Judgment

• Suspension of judgment is the foundation for Dialogue, and

perhaps, the most challenging skill. Suspending judgment is a key to building a climate of trust and safety. The suspension of judgment allows you to listen with more ease and less “blocks”

Reflection enables us to

inspect information and perceive relationships.

How?

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