12

Listening Actively to Stay in Tune with Participants

For a workshop leader, not listening actively leads to big problems.

——Bruce Klatt¹

Several of the previous chapters discussed the speaking side of communication in training. Now it’s time to focus on listening—a crucial yet greatly underappreciated training ability. It’s a fundamental training skill—even in the many aspects of a workshop where the trainer’s dominant role is speaking. Active listening is crucial for successful application in twenty-three of the chapters and two of the appendices in this book.

With its contribution to effectiveness in each of the above aspects of workshop leadership, you can see that, in dynamic workshops, listening ranks right up there with effective presenting as an indispensable training tool.

Most Trainers Are Better Talkers Than Listeners

Good listening is a rare skill in our society. Few of us were brought up in households where the parents were good listeners and the kids experienced a rich listening environment in which they absorbed the ability by osmosis. In fact, the opposite is the norm.

Although every person of sound mind and a functional auditory system can listen, the average person doesn’t absorb half of what he’s told. Years ago, research at the University of Minnesota, Florida State University, and Michigan State University, and duplicated over time at several other universities, found that “immediately after the average person listens to someone talk, he remembers only about half of what he heard—no matter how carefully he thought he had listened.”² Communication scholars at American University in Washington, DC, found that the average television viewer got only one-third of the points covered in a typical newscast.³ As Dr. Lyman Steil, a founder and past president of the International Listening Association, says,

It can be stated with virtually no qualification that by any standard set, people in general do not know how to listen.⁴

Thus, it’s not surprising that many people in our vocation are better talkers than listeners.

Effective listening is

• a set of learned skills

• for demonstrating that you understand the speaker’s thoughts and feelings

• from the speaker’s frame of reference.

Three Sub-Skills of Effective Listening

Your training can be greatly enhanced by mastering the three core skills of listening:

• Attending

• Following

• Reflecting

Attending Skills

Attending is the body language of good listening. This skill gets you physically involved in the interaction. Competent listeners pay attention and they show it in their body language. Both the speaker and the listener are positively impacted by these aspects of good attending:

Good attending shows the participant that you are tuned in to what he’s saying. Research shows that good attending improves the listener’s concentration⁵ and comprehension.⁶ It also tends to increase the speaker’s fluency,⁷ which makes your listening easier and more pleasurable. As Kathleen Singh says,

Our simple attention, offered to another person, is the most underused of human resources, one of the least costly, one of the most freely available, and—without a doubt— one of the most powerfully beneficial.⁸

Following Skills

There are three following skills:

• Door openers

• Brief encouragers

• Head nods

The first two following skills get you vocally involved in the interaction, and occasional coordinated head nods support your vocal involvement.

Door Openers

Door openers are succinct invitations for a person to begin speaking or to continue speaking. A door opener can simply be an open question:

What are your thoughts about this?

Some door openers are prefaced by a short summary of what the person just said:

Preface:

I’m wondering if you’re uncertain about whether this would work in your setting.

Open question:

Would you say more about that?

Sometimes door openers are prefaced by a brief description of the other person’s body language:

Preface:

You look relaxed and satisfied, now that the conference you were leading is over.

Open Question:

How did it go?

Brief Encouragers

Brief encouragers are

• one- to three-word statements, such as “I see,” or

• empathic sounds, such as “Mm-hmm.”

They enable a trainer to participate in the conversation while keeping the interaction focused on the participant and what he’s communicating. A number of other words and short phrases can be used to let the speaker know that you are following what he’s saying:

“Tell me more.”	“Really.”	“Gosh.”
“For instance.”	“Oh.”	“Darn!”
“Then?”	“And?”	“Go on.”

Head Nods

Nodding your head occasionally is a noninterruptive way to signal that although you are not responding verbally, you are paying attention to what’s being said. Sometimes brief encouragers are accompanied by head nods.

Reflecting Skills

What most distinguishes good listening from average listening is a cluster of skills known as reflective listening. Reflections are concise restatements of the core of the speaker’s message in the listener’s own words. You don’t need to reflect everything participants say—just the main points. Reflections can sometimes be used in casual interactions but are invaluable for doing the following:

• Showing that you understand what was said in significant conversations

• Fielding participants’ questions

• Responding to important subject matter concerns

• Receiving feedback

• Getting the conversation back on track when a misunderstanding has occurred

• Handling disgruntled feelings and hostile comments

• Responding to other emotionally laden issues

We’re convinced that reflective listening is a “must have” set of skills for trainers. Unfortunately, as UCLA’s Dr. Gerald Goodman notes, this aspect of listening is “the missing link in communication because so few people reflect what they hear.”⁹ So, it’s crucial to make sure you’ve mastered this key skill.

There are four kinds of reflections, all of which are important tools for trainers:

• Paraphrases (reflections of content—the facts that were expressed)

• Reflections of feelings (reflections of the emotions that were expressed by the participant’s wording and/or body language)

• Reflections of meaning (reflections of feelings and the related content)

• Summary reflections (succinct restatements that capture the thoughts and feelings of a whole interaction or a major part of it)

Paraphrasing

A paraphrase is a succinct restatement of the factual content of the speaker’s message in the listener’s own words.¹⁰ It’s useful in many conversations that are somewhat important to one or both parties and have a moderate level of intensity. Here’s an example.

Participant:

It seems to me that there isn’t much payoff for restating what the participant says, and to be frank about it I would feel pretty foolish doing that.

Trainer’s paraphrase:

You’re skeptical about the value of paraphrasing.

Using a “You-Focused” Sentence Starter

Beginners at paraphrasing often unconsciously slip into the speaking role. When that happens, their attempts at paraphrasing generally begin with “I” or “I’ve” and end up as statements of their own opinion. For example, “I’ve had a similar experience.” Or, “I doubt that would happen.” Also, putting the word “I” at or near the beginning of your paraphrase can lead to the use of bloated and hackneyed sentence starters such as, “What I think I hear you saying is . . .” or “If I get what you are driving at . . .”

Using a concise you-focused sentence starter helps keep your reflection focused on the speaker and her point of view:

“You think . . .”	“It’s important to you that . . .”
You’re concerned that . . .”	“You’d prefer . . .”
“As you see it . . .”	“From your standpoint . . .”

Notice that each of these starters is very brief. And they all include the word “you” or some variation of it like “you’re” or “you’d.”

Avoid using the same sentence starter for all of your paraphrases; using the same starter repeatedly makes your listening sound odd and the repetition soon becomes monotonous.

As you gain experience with paraphrasing, you’ll find that this skill is even more effective when the you-focused starters are omitted. Using sentence starters is a temporary crutch to help keep your responses directed to the speaker’s concerns instead of jumping in with your own comments. As our friend and former colleague, Dr. Rick Brandon, says, “Sentence starters are like training wheels on a child’s first bicycle—a big help when learning but a handicap once you get the hang of it.”

Make Your Reflection a Statement, Not a Question

Many beginners at paraphrasing are uncertain of the accuracy of their paraphrases so to be on the safe side they word their paraphrase as a question. They lead off with queries like, “Do you mean . . . ?” or “Are you saying . . . ?” That’s okay once in a while if you are truly unsure of your paraphrase, but as a habitual way of paraphrasing it can be irritating to the speaker. And sentence starters with unnecessary phrases make conversations drag out needlessly since the speaker is asked to repeat a part of his message that the listener has already digested.

Sometimes listeners phrase their paraphrases as statements but turn their voice up at the end of the sentence. Unfortunately, the upward inflection at the end of the sentence changes what was said from a statement to a question. So turn your voice down somewhat at the end of each paraphrase as you would at the end of a typical sentence.¹¹

Although we recommend using statements rather than questions when saying back what you heard, you certainly don’t want a paraphrase to sound cocksure. You may have misunderstood the meaning, so you want the speaker to be able to say, “That’s not quite what I meant. Let me put it this way . . . ” Although an effective paraphrase is not dogmatic, it’s not overly tentative either; it’s a firm response as befits a good sounding board.

When you’re paraphrasing (or using other kinds of reflections), leave a short pause between the participant’s statement and your reflection to make sure she has completed that aspect of what she wanted to say.

You’ll usually be able to reflect at natural breaks in the conversation. Occasionally, however, a participant will talk at length without pausing. When that happens, you’ll need to cut in with something like, “You’re giving me a lot of information. Let me make sure I understand it.” Then paraphrase what was said and quickly return the focus of the workshop to the whole group. If it seems that the participant is likely to monopolize the conversation, postpone further discussion by suggesting that the conversation be continued on the next break, at lunch, or after class. (For more on monopolizers, see Chapter 15.)

Paraphrase Until You Get a “Yes”

Master trainer Ed Lisbe realized that when a paraphrase is on-target, the speaker typically replies with some form of yes. That is, she may do the following:

• Say “yes”

• Nod affirmatively

• Say “mm-hmm”

• Signal that your paraphrase was on the mark

• That’s what’s meant when we say “reflect until you get a yes.”

Reflecting Feelings

When the speaker’s feelings are more intense than normal, reflecting feelings is the listening skill of choice.

When reflecting feelings, avoid beginning your reflections with the words, “You feel”followed by a feeling word like “sad,” “mad,”or “glad.”That’s not the way people generally talk about feelings in their everyday conversations. Furthermore, by the end of a workshop, participants will be turned off by the needless and monotonous repetition of the words “you feel.” Rather than lead off with, “You feel surprised that . . . ,” you can simply say, “You’re surprised that . . . ” Omitting the words “feel” and “feeling” from your reflections helps the reflections fit seamlessly into the conversation.

Reflections of feeling often work better when you avoid using feeling words such as “angry,” “afraid,” or “happy.” Instead, rely mainly on figures of speech, which sound more natural and down to earth.

Here are some examples of figures of speech that you can use in place of “positive” feeling words:

“It was just what the doctor ordered.”

“You were on cloud nine.”

“That really hit the spot.”

“You’re tickled pink.”

“That was the frosting on the cake.”

“You’re in seventh heaven.”

“You felt like a new person.”

Here are examples of figures of speech that you can use in place of “negative” feeling words:

“That put you on your guard.”

“His criticism took the wind out of your sails.”

“You’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”

“You’re up in the air about whether to give that a try.”

“You got hot under the collar.”

“Then you hit the ceiling.”

When reflecting feelings, make sure your voice and facial expression are compatible with your verbal statement of feelings.

Reflecting Meanings

Reflections of meaning feed back to the speaker a concise summary of what she just expressed including both the feeling and the situation or the thought that prompted the feeling. People often state the feeling at the beginning of a reflection of meaning:

What a relief [feeling word] that the evaluations were so good [situation that prompted the feeling].

You can inject a bit of variety in your reflections by sometimes reversing the order of the sentence by leading off with a description of the situation that triggered the feeling and noting the feeling toward the end of the sentence:

Spending all that time in meetings [situation that prompted the feeling] was a downer [feeling word] for you.

Reflections of feeling and reflections of meaning are invaluable training tools. And the more difficult the situation you find yourself in, the more valuable they’ll be.

Summary Reflections

Summary reflections succinctly wrap up a whole conversation or a major segment of a conversation. You’ll rarely have sufficiently extensive conversations during the actual class time to use summary reflections during the workshop. But there will be times when you’ll have longer conversations—with a manager who is talking with you about tailoring a workshop to the needs of his division, an after-class conversation with a dissatisfied or an especially appreciative participant, or when listening to some fairly lengthy input from a colleague in a staff meeting.

Later in the book we’ll discuss how to integrate these listening skills into your training in ways that will greatly reduce participant resistance and will enable you to skillfully manage the most challenging training situations that you’ll face.

The Listening Spirit

Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, emphasized the importance of having an attitude that supports quality listening. That attitude, which we think of as the listening spirit, consists of respect, empathy, and genuineness. When you have good listening skills, as described above, and they’re supported by the listening spirit, you have a very powerful and widely applicable training tool—one that will also serve you well in other aspects of your life.