Core Skills

It is not enough to listen, you must show that you are listening - you must attend to the communicator. Attending is the skill of showing your availability to the communicator. Attending is primarily a non-verbal skill - you SHOW your attention.

Professor Gerard Egan gives five key behaviours for attending:

1. Sit face to face
2. Use an open body posture
3. Lean toward the speaker
4. Maintain comfortable eye contact
5. Keep your posture relaxed

Egan writes primarily for counsellors and consultants but his studies and findings are of much wider appeal and application.

Face to Face. The fact that most of our communication is non-verbal emphasises the importance of the face to face aspect of attending. Face to face, I make myself available to you; face to face I am less likely to be distracted; face to face I will pick up more of your unspoken messages.

Open Body Posture. We've already mentioned some of the non-verbal body language messages. When attending to a speaker we should show our openness to their attempts to communicate in our body posture - so uncross your ankles and knees, unfold your arms, unclasp your hands and unclench your fists. These are all open postures and will be positively, even if sub-consciously, received by the communicator.

Lean Toward the Speaker. This gives a very strong positive message, as though you were straining to hear, anxious to catch every word. The inclination may be quite delicate - head only or head and shoulders, but as the exchange continues, more prominent leaning can be a very powerful encouragement. However, too strong an inclination too early can be misread as aggression, so care is needed.

Maintain Comfortable Eye Contact. The eyes have been described as the windows of the soul. In Western cultures eye contact in communication is regarded positively - it is regarded as a signal of openness, honesty and trust. This does not mean that we stare unblinkingly into the face of the speaker - staring is not acceptable in Western cultures. So the eye contact should be comfortable and be established naturally.

Relaxed Posture. Standing or sitting, if we are tense this will communicate itself through our general posture. It is important to be alert and relaxed.

It has often been observed that God gave us two ears and one mouth because listening is more important than talking! But listening - skills are not easily acquired, mainly because they require us to exercise mental discipline.

Think for a moment about what happens when you speak. First of all, you begin with an introduction, eg “Well I agree with what you have said, but what I would like to say is ....” , then you move on to say what is really important. Finally you close off with a statement of this kind: “So, this is really what I feel is important, and I think the group should take note of my position - not that I am trying to be obstructive.” In fact, the real meat of your statement is sandwiched between two quite irrelevant statements.

These statements may, in fact, be very long indeed, while the 'meat' might be quite thin!

Now consider what happens when you are listening:

1. You hear the opening words, and in this case, you will respond to the words 'agree' and 'but'. Immediately, your mind goes off and begins to prepare a response to that 'but'.
2. Your mind is now working on the opening words just at the critical point where the speaker's real thought is voiced.
3. You may have missed the real point, but now you know what to say, so you can pay full attention again!
4. The speaker is winding up and has your full attention, but has nothing to say!

This can be illustrated graphically by tracing the importance of the content of the speaker's message and the level of attention of the listener against time.

The reason why we fail to understand is all too obvious to see!

Score yourself on the following 20 questions - circling your response to each question.

Attitudes Almost
always Almost
Never
1 Do you like to listen to other people talk? 5 4 3 2 1
2 Do you encourage other people to talk? 5 4 3 2 1
3 Do you listen, even if you do not like the person who is talking? 5 4 3 2 1
4 Do you listen equally well whether the person talking is man or woman, young or old, black or white? 5 4 3 2 1
5 Do you listen equally well to a friend, acquaintance and stranger? 5 4 3 2 1
Actions
6 Do you put what you have been doing out of sight and out of mind? 5 4 3 2 1
7 Do you look at the speaker? 5 4 3 2 1
8 Do you try to ignore the distractions about you? 5 4 3 2 1
9 Do you smile, nod your head, and otherwise encourage the speaker to talk? 5 4 3 2 1
10 Do you think about what is being said? 5 4 3 2 1
Comprehension
11 Do you try to understand what the speaker means? 5 4 3 2 1
12 Do you try to understand why the speaker is trying to communicate? 5 4 3 2 1
13 Do you let the speaker finish what they are trying to say? 5 4 3 2 1
14 If the speaker hesitates do you encourage them to go on? 5 4 3 2 1
15 Do you restate what is being said to check your understanding? 5 4 3 2 1
Evaluation
16 Do you withhold judgement about ideas until the speaker is finished? 5 4 3 2 1
17 Do you listen, regardless of the manner of speaking and choice of words? 5 4 3 2 1
18 Do you listen, even though you anticipate what the speaker is going to day? 5 4 3 2 1
19 Do you question the speaker in order to get a full explanation of the ideas? 5 4 3 2 1
20 Do you ask the speaker to define technical or unfamiliar words he uses? 5 4 3 2 1
Column Totals
Grand Total

Assessment

If you scored less than 50, I am surprised anyone bothers to talk to you! If you scored between 50 and 70, you are in danger of losing contact with those around. Over 70 and you are a good listener. Keep it up!

Whatever your score in total, pay special attention to those areas which you rated three or less.

Here then are 10 Top Tips for listening. You will need to practise them. Today's world, if it has trained us at all, has trained us in one-way communication 'giving'! We must work hard at receiving.

 Do be prepared to work hard at listening.
 Do keep an open mind.
 Do beware of hearing only what you want or expect to hear, and don't make assumptions about what people are going to say.
 Do listen to how things are said, but don't spend your time mentally criticising the way a contribution is being presented.
 Do withhold judgement or evaluation until the entire point has been presented.
 Do ask for clarification if you have not understood.
 Don't be afraid to admit you 'switched off' for a minute or misheard.
 Don't think about your next contribution while another person is talking.
 Don't interrupt, and don't finish people's sentences for them - you could be wrong.
 Don't react emotionally to personal 'red flag' words.