CT || MODULE 2 >


			MODULE 2 > Forming Teams 2.10a Active Listening Objective of Exercise: To develop the skill of actively listening to another person without interruption other than for clarity and understanding. Instructions: Pick a partner. You have been given a tape recorder. Put your names and your team numbers on the tapes. Each person will speak for fifteen minutes. The remaining person will use active listening skills while listening to the other person. Do not interrupt the other person unless you need clarification or do not understand the meaning. Use clarification, paraphrasing and reflection techniques to share the meaning of what is being said to you. At the end of the conversation, summarize what he/she told you and allow time for your partner to respond to your summarization. Allow for the person to be silent if appropriate. You do not have to jump right into the conversation. The person may be collecting his/her thoughts. The first person should speak for 15 minutes about their experiment, how their team is performing the experiment and the skills the team leader is using to be an effective team leader. Tape the conversation. Then reverse the roles and tape the conversation. The second person should speak for 15 minutes about their experiment, how their team is performing the experiment and the skills the team leader is using to be an effective team leader. Turn the tapes in to the Teaching Assistant. Write the roles you played on the tape sequentially. You will receive feedback on your level of competence. What Are Effective (Active) Listening Skills? In order to effectively facilitate and be an effective team member, learning to listen effectively is required. When forming a team, listening effectively is a prerequisite to understanding and acknowledging all team members. A team should read over and discuss effective listening techniques. Failing to effectively listen can discourage self-exploration, create a lack of task focus, or allow a strategy to be enacted prematurely. Listening involves three processes: receiving a message processing a message sending a message Processing includes thinking about the message and considering its meaning. Barriers in processing a message occur: When a person’s bias prevents them from acknowledging parts of the message because the person did not understand part of the message or was busy forming their response to the first part of the communication. A person can hear what they want to hear rather than hearing the actual message. Sometimes a person may receive and process the message accurately but have difficulty in responding with clarity because of a lack of communication skills. Some biases that people have that prevent them from hearing a message accurately can be cultural, skill oriented or gender based. (Source: Hamilton, Cheryl & Parker, Cordell, 1997. Communicating for Results: A Guide for Business & Professions. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.) Stages of Effective Listening to Promote Communication (Langlois, 1997) Clarification is a question, often used after receiving an ambiguous message from another team member. Ask open-ended questions that help to clarify ambiguous words, phrases or statements. Seek additional information or explanation. Paraphrasing is a rephrasing of the content part of the message, which describes a situation, event, person, or idea. Deal with the content of the communication not the manner in which it is presented. Rephrase the content as closely as possible to highlight the communication you have received. Reflection is a rephrasing of the speaker’s feelings, or the affect part of the message. Deal with feelings and nonverbal communication associated with the content. Label feelings correctly and encourage further expression. Summarization is an extension of the paraphrase and reflection responses that involves tying together and rephrasing two or more different parts of a message. Sum up the whole communication by restating both content and feelings in an integrated manner. Communicate to the person that they have been heard through verbal and nonverbal expressions. How to Listen and Respond CLARIFICATION Clarification is listening for accuracy and purpose. The speaker expresses themselves from their internal frame of reference, which can be vague and confusing. If you are unsure of the message being conveyed, it is helpful to clarify the message. The question is usually phrased as ... "Are you saying this...", or "Could you try to describe that..., or "Can you clarify that ...." A clarification is used to allow the speaker to be more explicit and to confirm the accuracy of the listener’s perception about the message. Steps in Clarifying Identify the content of the speaker’s verbal and nonverbal message Identify any vague or confusing parts to the message to check them out for accuracy or elaboration Decide on appropriate ways to clarify the message, such as "Could you describe," "Could you clarify," or "Are you saying". Assess the effectiveness of your clarification by listening and observing your team member’s response. Examples of Clarification TEAM MEMBER: "Sometimes I just want to get away from it all." TEAM LEADER: "Could you describe what you mean by getting away from it all?" TEAM MEMBER: "Well, I just have so much work to do.... I’m always feeling behind and overloaded. I’d like to get out from under that miserable feeling." PARAPHRASE Carefully word the rephrasing to insure that the response leads to further discussion or increased understanding for all team members. Stress important words and ideas that were expressed. Do not parrot the team member because they may feel ridiculed. Begin the paraphrase with statements like "as you are saying" or "that you are aware that...". Paraphrasing is used to make team members aware that you understand their communication Paraphrasing is used to encourage elaboration of a key idea or thought Paraphrasing helps team members to focus on a particular situation, event, idea or behavior Paraphrasing keeps team members on track and stops the repetition of an idea Paraphrasing facilitates decision making because the repetition of key ideas and phrases clarifies the core issues Steps in Paraphrasing Recall the message by restating it to yourself. "What has the team member told you?" Identify the key content by asking yourself, "What idea, situation, person, or object is discussed in the message?" Select a sentence stem for your paraphrase.... "It seems like..." Examples of Sensory Words and Responses to Use to Reflect, Paraphrase, and Clarify Team Member Sensory Words Visual see bright clear show focus colorful view glimpse picture "now look" perspective Corresponding Coaching or Facilitating Phrases It seems like It appears as though As I see it From my perspective It looks like I see what you mean Auditory listen discuss yell should tell loud told noisy talk call hear ears "now listen" Corresponding Facilitating Phrases Sounds like As I hear it What you’re saying is I hear you saying Something tells you You’re telling me that Kinesthetic feel relaxed touch sense pressure experience hurt firm pushy grasp "you know" Corresponding Facilitating Phrases You feel From my standpoint I sense that I have the feeling that Using a sentence stem, put the key content into your own words; e.g., "It seems like you’re angry because..."As you deliver the paraphrase remember to respond as a statement not as a question. Assess the effectiveness of your paraphrase by listening to and observing the team member’s response. Verbal and nonverbal messages will confirm the usefulness of the paraphrase you have chosen. Paraphrasing is used to express the content or the cognitive part of the message and can include details about people, objects, or ideas Paraphrasing is not used to respond to the person’s affective part of the message; reflection is used. REFLECTION Reflection of feeling is used to restate the affective part of a message, the team member’s emotional tone Reflection is similar to paraphrasing except that it deals with the emotional tone or component to the message which is lacking in the paraphrasing Reflecting feelings has five intended purposes Reflection, if used effectively and accurately, helps team members to feel understood. Reflection encourages team members to express more of their feelings (both positive and negative) about a particular situation, person, or idea. Encouraging expression of feeling is not an end in of itself; rather, it is a means of helping a team member to understand the scope of the problem or situation. Reflection helps team members to manage their feelings. Learning to deal with feelings is especially important when a team member experiences intense feelings such as fear, dependency, or anger. Strong emotions can interfere with a team member’s ability to make a rational response (cognitive or behavioral) to pressure. Reflection also helps team members who express negative feelings about others. Using reflection in these circumstances lessens the possibility of an emotional conflict, which may arise because people are trying to be heard and neither is listening. Reflection helps team members discriminate accurately amongst various feelings. Team members often use feeling: words like anxious or nervous to depict other feelings such as resentment or depression. Accurate reflections of feelings help team members to refine their understanding of various emotional moods. Steps in Reflection Listen for the presence of feeling or affect words in the team member’s message. These words usually fall into one of seven categories: anger, fear, uncertainty, sadness, happiness, strength, and weakness. By recognizing these words in communications you can expand your vocabulary for describing emotions. Watch the nonverbal behavior while the verbal message is being delivered, noting cues such as body posture, facial expression, and voice quality. Nonverbal cues are more often a more accurate clue to a team member’s emotional response because nonverbal behaviors are less easily controlled than words. Verbally reflect the feelings back to the team member using different words. The choice of words is critical to the effectiveness of the skill; it is necessary to select affect words that accurately match not only the type of feeling, but also it’s intensity, as illustrated in the table above. Avoid understatements and overstatements that can make a team member feel ridiculed or intimidated. Control of intensity of the expressed affect can be adjusted by the use of adverbs such as somewhat, quite or very. Select an appropriate sentence stem, which matches your team member’s choice of sensory words. After deciding on the appropriate lead in, it is necessary to add on the context, or situation, around which the feelings occurred (paraphrasing). EXAMPLE: Team Member: "I just can’t make a presentation; "I get so anxious" "I just never do well even though I practice." In this message, the affect is anxiety; the content is public speaking. Reflect the affect, ("You feel uptight"); the context ("whenever you speak") Assess the effectiveness of your reflection. If you are accurate the team member will usually affirm your response by saying "Yes, that is right" or "That’s exactly how I feel" If the response is off target, the team member will respond by "Well, it’s not quite like that" or "No, I don’t feel that way". Reflection should be used carefully; reflection of feelings may be too powerful in some situations, but it should be used to resolve an impasse within the team. An outside member of the team such as a faculty advisor or team coordinator may best use reflection SUMMARIZATION Themes that one team member has expressed can be summarized. Usually these themes are expressed in topics that the team member continually refers to or brings up in some way. Purpose of Summarization Tie together multiple elements of team members’ messages. Summarization is a good feedback tool because it extracts meaning from vague and ambiguous messages. Use to identify a common theme or pattern that become apparent after several messages. Can interrupt a team member’s incessant rambling or "storytelling". Use to moderate the pace of an interaction that is moving too quickly, "providing breathing space" for all members to understand the communication. An effective way to review progress. Steps in Summarization Attend to and recall the message or messages by stating them to yourself covertly. Identify any pattern or theme. Select an appropriate beginning for your summarization that uses the pronoun "you" or the team member’s name. Select words that describe the theme and tie together the multiple elements. Assess the effectiveness of your summarization by listening for and observing whether the team member confirms or denies the summary. (Source: Langlois, Harold V., Challenges of Team Management, a course for graduate students. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.) Helpful Hints for Effective Listening When beginning a conversation with others, keep in mind that everyone is a decision-maker and a customer for your ideas. Acceptance of your ideas is predicated upon how you present them and how much you understand about the other person’s perspective. Listen to others from a neutral, open-minded state, which allows you to concentrate and focus on what others are saying to you. Pay attention to both the logical content of what others are saying, how they say it and how they feel about the subject under discussion. How people feel about an issue is a key determinant in decision making. If you listen to both emotions and words, you will absorb both and have a deeper understanding of how the person feels and what message they are conveying. Respond in such a way that the other person understands that you have taken them seriously and that you respect their point of view.