Communicating (Simple Tools 4/5)

Simple Tools for Challenging Times

These 5 lessons were developed by Dr. Jan Russell & Keziah Gibbons as the world went into lockdown in the Spring of 2020. The intention was to apply the tools of psychologically informed environments to help to empower people as we went through this state of uncertainty.

Although designed specifically for lockdown, & recorded in a cupboard due to limited resources, the tools are good & can be applied to any situation to ease pressure and increase a sense of agency.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to session four of this short course on psychologically informed practice for quarantine and unusual times.

Today's session is all about communication and listening skills.

For many of us,

The challenge of confinement is not just about how we look after ourselves,

It's also how we relate with each other.

We might be in the company of one or just a few.

Either way,

It's great to be able to do our very best to understand each other at the level of emotion as well as thought.

In this session,

You will learn one or two very simple ways to offer supportive listening to those you care for.

These skills can also be applied in digital interactions to improve your social connection in times of physical distancing.

This is about creating a shared space with those you share your space with,

Physical or virtual.

A space where you and your loved ones can feel really held,

Hurt and seen.

A chance to show the people you choose to spend your time with at this time that they matter to you and you get them.

It's also an opportunity to know what to ask for when you want others to listen to you.

There are two aspects of listening skills that you can start practicing right away.

The first is attending.

Being with someone in the moment.

The second is active listening.

Each of these aspects has a specific set of practices attached.

Let's start with attending.

This may seem very simple yet when we're not conscious in our communication,

It's not always intuitive to practice.

Attending means simply listening to someone in the moment,

Holding the space for what they are saying.

Perhaps there's more to describe in what attending is not doing than in what it is.

When you attend to someone you're listening to,

You give them your full attention.

You listen without interruption and you keep your focus on what they are saying.

Common distractions from attending include distracted behaviours,

Paying attention to phone,

TV,

Something else that you might be doing and distracted thought patterns.

This might be thoughts drifting off to something else but can also include thought behaviours that we do when we think we're listening to someone.

For example,

Thinking about your reply while the other person is still speaking.

If you recognise yourself in any of these behaviours,

That's okay.

The first step to improving any skill is always acknowledging that there's room for improvement.

I'm going to invite you to take your pen and paper now and write down each of the following skills,

One on each line.

1.

Being present.

2.

Listening without interrupting.

3.

Focusing on what the other person is saying.

4.

Giving your full attention without distracted behaviours.

5.

Listening without thinking about what you are going to say next.

Beside each of these listening skills,

Give yourself a score out of 10.

This is for how well do you think you do each of these skills at the moment.

Pause the audio and do this now.

The second part of our listening skills is active listening.

In active listening we paraphrase,

Summarise and empathise.

This helps us to really take in what the other person is saying,

But it also helps the other person to know that we are listening to them.

Paraphrasing is repeating back what the person has said using different words.

It requires you to have listened and understood and communicates this to the person you're listening to.

You might paraphrase what has just been said when it is your turn to speak or when you summarise after the other person has spoken.

Summarising happens after someone has spoken or after a larger chunk of what they have to say on their subject.

It is when you repeat back the main points of what they have said,

Both the content and the emotion.

Empathising is perhaps the most important of the active listening skills.

As you listen,

You notice what emotions are being described.

You can then name these as you paraphrase and summarise.

Repeating back the emotions you have picked up on not only indicates that you understand what the other person is feeling,

But sometimes it can help them to clarify those feelings.

And you might be interested to know that when people name an emotion,

Particularly the emotion of fear,

The activity in the amygdala reduces and the level of cortisol,

The stress hormone,

Drops immediately.

This is particularly valuable right now.

With each of these active listening skills,

Don't worry if the person you are listening to corrects you on what you reflect back to them.

This is a part of your role as a skilled and empathic listener,

To allow them to discover exactly what they are saying.

You are working together to find meaning.

These three skills are the core of active listening skills and now for what active listening is not.

Active listening is not advising or suggesting.

Advice is something which is all too often offered when it has not been asked for.

People can offer advice,

Solutions or suggestions because we want to fix the problem.

But that is not the same as listening empathically.

The intention behind our active listening practice is not to fix problems,

But to allow the person we are listening to,

To feel that their experience is really understood.

Active listening is also not about satisfying your own curiosity.

In one way,

The content of what they are saying almost doesn't matter.

Your intention when actively listening to someone is not to find out more about what happened,

It's not to gossip or to live vicariously.

Your intention is to make them feel hurt.

This is about them,

Not you.

So when practicing active listening,

Avoid asking questions or becoming curious.

Stay in the moment and listen to what the speaker wants to tell you.

If you can do this and there is something they want or need you to know,

They will feel much safer to share than if they feel that you are being nosy or reactive in some way.

This may appear counterintuitive at first,

As sometimes we might believe that it is polite to ask questions.

However,

If you can curb your curiosity,

You move away from a surface veneer of polite to a much deeper and more genuine caring connection.

Come back to your pen and paper now and write down the following active listening skills,

One on each line.

One,

Paraphrasing.

Two,

Summarizing.

Three,

Empathizing.

Four,

Listening without advising.

Five,

Listening without questioning.

Now rate yourself out of 10 once again on each of these skills.

Pause the audio and do it now.

Now I'm going to share with you something that we have observed to be true in our time delivering listening skills training across various contexts and then I'll be suggesting ways in which you can practice your own listening skills.

What we have found to be consistently true time and time again is that people overrate their own listening skills.

In this initial rating out of 10,

People tend to rate themselves fairly highly.

Yet when they are given a chance to practice and to listen to people with a conscious awareness of what these skills are,

They swiftly notice areas where they can improve.

My invitation to you today is to go away and practice these listening skills.

It's up to you how you practice.

You might do it with your family,

Housemates or anyone you're with.

You might do it on any calls you're making.

These skills can even be applied in text message and email correspondence.

What I can tell you is that where someone is repeating the same things over and over again,

It may be because they are not feeling seen or heard.

So these skills can be really effective in transforming the most tedious of interactions.

So you can choose one skill from your list and go and spend a day practicing it,

Choosing another skill tomorrow and every day after until you have practiced them all.

Or you can dive straight in and practice all the skills in the next conversations you have.

One thing I will invite you to do is for the next few days,

Either at the end of the day or after each time you practice your listening skills,

Come back and re-score yourself.

That way you can notice your own progress as you really pay conscious attention to these core communication skills.

Now that you have the specific listening skills,

You can also help you to make specific requests when asking others to listen to you.

So instead of a generic and possibly slightly exasperated,

Will you just listen to what I'm saying?

You can ask specifically that those around you,

Please put the phone down while I'm speaking,

Please don't interrupt me,

Please listen for emotion,

Please listen rather than advise,

Or please listen rather than ask questions.

Enjoy practicing and you may be surprised at the depths of connection that you can create when you hold that space for another to speak.

Thanks so much for your listening today.

In our next and final session,

Jan will take you through playing to your own strengths and supporting those of others.

Have the best possible rest of your day.

Reviews

Really helpful lesson/talk on listening skills. This was a great breakdown of the different elements that create connection through listening. The part about refraining from asking questions was interesting and a different view; I could see how it comes back to truly being present and creating a safe space. Again like other talks in this series, I appreciated the greater awareness these lessons bring.

Having worked in the social services field, I realize I was a much better listener when I was getting paid to do it. Currently my listening skills don’t rate above 3 in any category. Work to be done! Thank you, Jan and Keziah 🤍🤍🤍

Seems simple, but definitely helpful! Everyone should listen, just in case. I took notes. Thank you!

thank you! You are such an amazing teacher! And you have a beautiful voice as well 🙏❤️🙏

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Thank you. Nice reminders to reflect upon. 🗣🙊👂😁❤️🙏

Excellent. Thank you, Keziah. Reminds me of my many years on the committee of the local Cancer Support Group. We had regular listening and responding sessions for committee members. A few of them said that they had been before so didn't need this. My response was that we could all benefit in some way even if we had attended these numerous times before. I feel your meditation has been of benefit to me and I will listen again.
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