This article is written by Susan Johnston, Project Lead, Transferable Skills, Canada School of Public Service.
Active listening skills help us communicate more effectively, and help others do the same.
We all have different communications styles, standards and expectations around how people interact. This affects how we interpret what we hear, which can often be very different from what a speaker intends.
Listening skills are critical for facilitators, whose role is to both hear what people have said, and respond in ways that ensure participants feel they have been fully understood.
Active listening is about fully concentrating on what someone is saying when they speak, reinforcing your listening through a series of verbal and non-verbal techniques.
When we engage in this way, we’re listening for both the speaker’s intent, and the meaning in what they say. That is, we’re both listening to what is being said, and what isn’t being said.
In this post, we’ll go through some active listening techniques that you can use in your own communications with colleagues, and when working with groups.
Techniques to engage people, facilitate decisions and support full participation
Before you get started, consider your own state of mind. Are you ready to focus on the speaker, and let go of any potential urges you have to speak or act? Check your body language. Are you making eye contact? Facing the other person? Limiting distractions? If you needed to capture what you were hearing, are you positioned to listen, or take notes as applicable?
Here’s a list of techniques in active listening that will guide you through the conversation:
Mirroring (or restating): Repeating a speaker’s words back to them, in order to confirm that you have fully heard what they said. For example, “Amir, this morning you asked if we could focus on tips and tricks for working with challenging behaviour.”
Reflecting: Repeating speaker’s words back to them, while also clarifying their intent and feelings in order to validate that you or others have understood them correctly, and to confirm that you recognise their perspective and its validity. For example, “you sound frustrated about the tech challenges we experienced setting up our meeting.”
Paraphrasing: Restating, in your own words, the speaker’s ideas and feelings, in order to verify whether you understood them correctly. For example: “So, you’d like me to rewrite this document because you’d like to integrate the outcomes of our meetings last week, and it means we can highlight the concerns our colleagues have raised.”
Linking (or bridging, referring back): Highlighting similarities between what different participants have said, or between topics, which helps people follow the discussion and connect ideas. For example, “Your insights earlier about guiding principles and ground rules also relate to how we talked about building trust”.
Observing and attending to non-verbal communication: Involves keeping an eye on the energy and tone of individual participants, and the group overall. For example: “It has been a long day and I can sense that the energy has dropped in the room. How about we take a short stretch break before we move to the next piece?”
Redirecting: Inviting others in a group to respond to a question or comment. It helps to involve more participants in the discussion and share perspectives that may have not been raised, highlight that the wisdom is with the participants (and not facilitator), and reinforce that the group owns the PROCESS and OUTCOME. In addition, it also encourages group reflection. For example, “Would anyone have insights to offer in response to Amir’s question?”
Summarising: Highlighting a few key words or points helps the group to clarify or validate the key topics in the discussion, and then build on what was already said. By summarising and then checking if we have understood correctly, the people involved in a conversation get additional clarity that they have been heard and understood. It also creates a space to check assumptions, or to correct any misunderstandings. For example, “Let me recap what has been said in the last few minutes and check where that leads us.”
Synthesising: Pulling together and highlighting threads of a discussion, people can connect and express key points in a discussion and share perspective on why they’re important. For example, “We’ve talked about our vision, the challenges and opportunities we’ve faced during the pandemic, and some options for moving forward. We’ve learned a lot about working virtually, and based on these I would like to propose three permanent changes we can make as a team.
Active listening exercises to try yourself, or with groups
Try a short active listening exercise that takes 15 minutes in reality, which you can try with colleagues or other groups. It’s a helpful exercise to learn facilitation skills, but it works equally well to open conversations on topics that may be challenging for the group you’re working with.
First, one person will talk for 60 seconds about something in your scenario, preferably a topic they really care about.
Their partner should then focus on listening for what the speaker: cares about, values, and views as important — based on verbal and non-verbal cues.
Once the speaker is done, the “listener” partner will use active listening techniques to confirm and reflect back what they heard.
Switch roles and repeat.
Come back together as a group. Ask three volunteer pairs to share what they learned about the practice of active listening. Ask: "What’s the takeaway here? How did active listening techniques affect your conversation?"
Remember: relationships matter and are key to building trust. You want to create a space where people feel they can take risks and voice strong opinions or different points of view.
Continuing the conversation
In summary, active listening skills help us focus on the meaning and intent of what someone is saying. Practicing them means checking our mindset, and then using various techniques to listen deeply to what someone is saying, confirming to the speaker that you have fully heard them.
As a facilitator, modelling this helps others in a group to hear the speaker more fully, and builds everyone’s capacity to do the same.
This post is intended as a first look at active listening skills, and how applying them can help you have better conversations, in your own life or working with groups. Do you have other techniques you like to work with, examples that really resonate, or exercises you like to do? Feel free to comment on this post. A key part of facilitation is working with the knowledge that is already in the group, or community, and making it visible.
Want to know more?
Here are some of my favourite active listening resources:
- Sam Kaner. (2014). Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. 3rd edition
- Cheryl Picard. (2016). Practicing Insight Mediation. University of Toronto Press
- Tom Justice and David Jamieson. (2012). The Facilitator's Fieldbook. 3rd edition
— Susan Johnston.
(Picture credit: Unsplash)
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