Active Listening Skills

Content learning/objectives.

· to introduce participants to the skills of effective listening;

· to prepare participants for a programme of study in which active listening skills will play an important role;

· to allow participants to reflect on their experiences and learning.

Developing Active Listening Skills

An important element of intercultural communication is listening. Listening is an essential skill for making and keeping relationships. Listening is a commitment and a compliment. It is a commitment to understanding how other people feel, how they see their world. It means putting aside your own prejudices and beliefs, your anxieties and self-interest, so that you can step behind the other person's eyes. You try to look at things from his or her perspective.

Real versus Pseudo Listening

Being quiet while someone talks does not constitute real listening. Real listening is based on the intention to do one of four things:

· to understand someone;

· to enjoy the company of someone;

· to learn something;

· to give help or solace to someone.

Pseudo-listening on the other hand often hides as the real thing. The intention in pseudo-listening is not to listen, but to meet some other need. The need maybe to:

· make people think you are interested so they will like you;

· listening to one specific piece of information and ignoring everything else, because you want to hear what you want to hear;

· looking for weak points in an argument so you can always be right;

· half-listening because that is what a good, kind or nice person would do.

Everyone is a pseudo-listener at times. Problems develop when real listening happens a lot less than pseudo-listening.

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Date: 2016-03-03; view: 864