Session 2: Active Listening

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Steps for Active Listening

No. 1: Pay attention. One goal of active listening is to set a comfortable tone and allow time
and opportunity for the other person to think and speak. Pay attention to your frame of mind as
well as your body language. Be focused on the moment and operate from a place of respect.
No. 2: Withhold judgment. Active listening requires an open mind. As a listener and a leader,
you need to be open to new ideas, new perspectives and new possibilities. Even when good
listeners have strong views, they suspend judgment, hold their criticism and avoid arguing or
selling their point right away.
No. 3: Reflect. Learn to mirror the other person’s information and emotions by paraphrasing
key points. Don’t assume that you understand correctly or that the other person knows you’ve
heard him. Reflecting is a way to indicate that you and your counterpart are on the same page.
No. 4: Clarify. Don’t be shy to ask questions about any issue that is ambiguous or unclear.
Open-ended, clarifying and probing questions are important tools. They draw people out and
encourage them to expand their ideas, while inviting reflection and thoughtful response.
No. 5: Summarize. Restating key themes as the conversation proceeds confirms and solidifies
your grasp of the other person’s point of view. It also helps both parties to be clear on mutual
responsibilities and follow-up. Briefly summarize what you have understood as you listened, and
ask the other person to do the same.
No. 6: Share. Active listening is first about understanding the other person, then about being
understood. As you gain a clearer understanding of the other person’s perspective, you can then
introduce your ideas, feelings and suggestions. You might talk about a similar experience you
had or share an idea that was triggered by a comment made previously in the conversation.

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Look interested, get interest

Involve yourself by responding
Stay on target ACTIVE
Test your understanding LISTENING
Evaluate your message
Neutralize your feelings
ACTIVE LISTENING
Effective helpers are active listeners. When you listen to clients, you listen to their stories. Some of
the elements of these stories are:
• their experiences, what they see as happening to them;
• their behaviors, what they do or fail to do;
• their affect, the feelings and emotions that arise from their experiences and behaviors;
• the core messages in their stories;
• their points of view expressed in their stories, including the reasons for their points of view
and the implications for holding any given point of view;
• the decisions they are making, together with the reasons for and implications or possible
consequences of those decisions;
• their intentions and proposals, that is, the goals they want to pursue and the actions they
intend to engage in;
• the wider context of their stories, points of view, decisions, and intentions;
• any particular “slant” they tend to give to any or all of the above.

Barriers to Listening
DIALOGUE
Turn Taking. Dialogue is interactive. You talk, then I talk. In counseling this means that, generally
speaking, monologues on the part of either client or helper don’t add value. Endless stories on the
part of clients and equally endless lectures on the part of helpers have no place in counseling.
Monologues breed isolation. Dialogue demands engagement. Turn taking opens up the possibility
for mutual learning. Helpers learn about their clients and base their interventions on what they come
to understand through the give-and-take of the dialogue. Clients come to understand themselves and
their concerns more fully and learn how to face up to their problems and unused opportunities.

Connecting. Have you ever witnessed (or engaged in) a conversation when the two parties keep
talking past each other? Alternating monologues have no place in therapy. Ideally, what either client
or helper says in the conversation should be connected in some way to what the other has said. The
helper’s responses should connect to the client’s remarks and, ideally, clients should connect with
what their helpers are saying. That is, helper and client need to engage each other if their working
alliance is to be productive. They need to actively listen to one another and respond in terms of what
they think the other person is saying. Later in Part II we will demonstrate what you can do to help
clients who are not up to speed in their ability to connect.

Mutual Influencing. In true dialogue the parties are open to being influenced by what the other
person has to say. This echoes the social-influence dimension of counseling discussed in Chapter 2.
Helpers influence their clients, and open-minded helpers learn from and are influenced by their
clients. In fact, it is impossible for clients to remain in the driver’s seat without influencing their
helpers. In very real ways clients and helpers continually challenge one another to be open to new
learning. Fowers and Davidov (2006, 2007) suggest that the virtue of “openness to the other” and
dialogue keep multicultural diversity and other forms of diversity from descending into chaos. The
pairing of the two keeps both client and helper on track.

Cocreating Outcomes. Good dialogue leads to outcomes that benefit both parties. As we have
seen, counseling is about results, accomplishments, and outcomes. The job of the counselor is
neither to tell others what to do nor merely to leave them to their own devices. The counselor’s job
is to act as a catalyst for the kind of problem-managing dialogue that helps clients find their own
answers. In true dialogue, neither party should know exactly what the outcome will be. If you know
what you’re going to tell a client or if the client has already made up his or her mind what he or she
is going to say and do, the two of you may well have a conversation, but it is probably not a
dialogue. Only clients can change themselves. Helpers influence and facilitate change through
effective dialogue. Cocreation of outcomes still leaves clients “in the driver’s seat.”
Although individual communications skills are a necessary part of communication
competence, dialogue together with the collaboration it fosters is the integrating mechanism. This
means dialogue informed by and permeated with the values outlined in Chapter 2. Effective dialogue
is both respectful and empathic, helps clients better understand and own their problems, and helps
them engage in problem-managing change. Exploitative dialogue is a contradiction in terms.

Egan, Gerard. The Skilled Helper: A Problem-Management and Opportunity-Development Approach to Helping
(HSE 123 Interviewing Techniques) (Page 73-74). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.
EXERCISE 3.2: DIALOGUE IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Not all conversations need to be true dialogues. However, most conversations would probably be
more productive if they were conducted in the spirit of dialogue. Often enough, dialogue in its
fullest sense would make a big difference to the outcome of the conversation.

1. In this exercise, have a conversation with your learning partner. Choose any topic that has some
substance and is agreeable to both of you. Talk for about 10 minutes. Make a video of the session.

2. After ten minutes play the video and debrief the conversation in the light of the requirements of
dialogue.

The subject of the conversation: What was the conversation about? What substance did it have? Did
it have enough substance to warrant a serious dialogue?

In what ways did it live up to the requirements of dialogue?

In what way did it fail to live up to these requirements?

3. Continue the conversation for another 10 minutes. Video it. Make every effort to make it a
dialogue. After 10 more minutes stop and review the video with your partner again. Discuss what
progress was made. What positive outcome, if any, did the two of you co-create through the
conversation? Determine what it would take to make dialogue or the spirit of dialogue second nature
to your communication style.

Egan, Gerard. Student Workbook Exercises for Egan's The Skilled Helper, 10th (Page 19). Cengage Textbook.

ATTENDING: VISIBLY TUNING IN

Your posture, gestures, facial expressions, and voice all send nonverbal messages to your clients.
The purpose of the exercises in this section is to make you aware of the different kinds of nonverbal
messages you send to clients through such things as body posture, facial expressions, and voice
quality, and how to use nonverbal behavior to make contact and communicate with them. It is
important that what you say verbally is reinforced rather than muddled or contradicted by your
nonverbal messages. There are two important messages about nonverbal behavior in this chapter.
First, use your posture, gestures, facial expressions, and voice to send messages you want to clients
to hear, such as, “I’m listening to you very carefully” or “I know what you’re saying is difficult for
you, but I’m with you.” Second, become aware of the messages your clients are sending to you
through their nonverbal behaviors. Learn how to understand them without over-interpreting them.

EXERCISE 3.3: WATCHING YOURSELF IN ACTION

After reading the section on visibly tuning in, replay the videos that you made for Exercise 3.2.
Debrief them with your learning partner. How effectively did you tune in? How did your nonverbal
behavior contribute to or detract from the dialogue? How would you describe your psychological
presence? Provide constructive feedback to each other.
EXERCISE 3.4:
VISIBLY TUNING IN TO OTHERS IN EVERYDAY CONVERSATIONS
This is another exercise for you to do outside the training group in your everyday life. Observe the
way you attend to others for a week or two—at home, with friends, at school, at work. Observe the
quality of your presence to others when you engage in conversations with them. Of course, even
being asked to “watch yourself” will induce changes in your behavior; you will probably tune in
more effectively than you ordinarily do. The purpose of this exercise is to sensitize you to attending
behaviors in general and to get some idea of what your day-to-day attending style looks like.

1. Rate yourself right now on a scale from 1-7 on how effectively you think you pay attention or
tune in to others—your physical and psychological presence—in your everyday conversations.

2. Without becoming preoccupied with every little behavior, watch yourself for a week as you tune
in (or fail to tune in) to others in your everyday conversations—that is, how you are present to those
with whom you interact.

3. What are you like when you are with others, especially in serious situations? What do you do well?
What do you fail to do?

4. After the week has passed, re-rate yourself.

5. What have you learned about your conversation style through this exercise? Read the following
example, and then write your own summary of what you have learned about yourself.

Example: Here is what one trainee wrote: “I found myself tuning in better to people I like. When I
was with someone neutral, I found that my eyes and my mind would wander. I also found that it’s
easier for me to tune in to others when I’m rested and alert. When I’m physically uncomfortable or
tired, I don’t put in much effort to tune in. I was unpleasantly surprised to find out how easily
distracted I am. Often I was there, but I really wasn’t there. However, simply by paying attention to
tuning in skills, I was with others more fully, even with neutral people. I’m just beginning to become
aware of the quality of my psychological presence in conversations.”

6. Describe your style of interacting with others.

Egan, Gerard. Student Workbook Exercises for Egan's The Skilled Helper, 10th (Page 19-20). Cengage
Textbook. Kindle Edition.
EXERCISE 3.6: LISTENING TO YOURSELF AS A PROBLEM SOLVER
In this exercise you are asked to “listen to yourself” in retrospect as you worked through some
important problem situation or spotted and developed some unused opportunity. Retell the story to
yourself in summary form.

Example: Here is Acantha’s story in summary form. “What I have to say is retrospective. I don’t
believe I was thinking this clearly back then. I got drunk during a football game and don’t recall
clearly what happened afterwards. I woke up in a guy’s room. I knew I had been violated. I had no
intention of having sex. At this point I became very aware of what I was doing. My intention that
day was to relax and have fun. My assumption was that no one I was with had any ulterior motives.
In one way I was not thinking straight. I should never have drunk too much, but at the time I did
not say that to myself. I never made a decision to throw caution to the wind, but I did by letting
others help me get drunk. My decision-making abilities were lost. As soon as I woke up I began
gathering my resources. I went for a long walk and thought things through. I decided not to
confront anyone except myself. Although I hoped that I would not be pregnant, I began thinking
how I would handle a pregnancy. Finally, I thought I needed to talk all of this through with a friend
or, perhaps better, an objective counselor.”

Now jot down a few highlights regarding how you manage your problem situation.

1. Debrief Acantha’s story by answering the following questions.

What was the issue?

What were her key experiences, that is, what happened to her?

What points of view of hers were involved?

What decisions did she make?

What emotions did she experience and express?

What did she do to cope with the problem or develop the opportunity?

2. Provide a case from your own life.

 Debrief by answering the above questions about your own story.

Egan, Gerard. Student Workbook Exercises for Egan's The Skilled Helper, 10th (Page 21, 22, 23). Cengage
Textbook. Kindle Edition.