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Effective Communication
Effective communication skills are essential for successful advising. Providing information in a meaningful and clear way to your advisees, serves as a basis for their decisions, which can have a profound influence on a freshman's entire life. Advisees are not simply deciding what courses they will take or what they will major in; they are also deciding their futures.
Here are some helpful tips:
- Allow your advisees to tell their story first; do not interrupt their sentences, offer advice, or give suggestions (unless asked to).
- Keep similar feelings or problems from your own experience to a minimum and try not to give the impression that you want to jump right in and talk.
- Appreciate the emotion, voice intonation, and body language behind his/her words. Obviously, this is not possible through email, but there is nothing wrong with a phone call or a personal visit!
- Establish consistent eye contact, use affirmative head nods, and try to avoid nervous or bored gestures and fight off external distractions.
- Listen carefully and check your understanding. Paraphrasing what advisees have said or asking a question can help clarify meaning and determine that you're on the same page. Too often,communication is broken and misunderstandings occur. Asking questions and checking understanding are two ways to help keep communication on track.
- Use open-ended questions and similar techniques that enable you to discuss topics with advisees rather than allowing only "yes" or "no" responses.
- Talk to your advisees about their backgrounds and experiences, get to know their interests and philosophies, what progress have they made toward their goals, how do they hope to achieve them, and what do they plan for the future. Such a discussion will provide you with helpful information, and it will reflect your concern for advisees as individuals.
- Always keep notes about what decisions have been made and why. A quick review before seeing students again will help you recall specific details. This is another important way to demonstrate your interest in them as individuals.
- Respect your advisees as people and show them that you respect them. One way to do this is to make a sincere effort to do an effective job as an associate advisor. Another is to allow your advisees to open up about their feelings, ideas, choices, fears, or concerns and to be respectful and considerate in return.
- Encourage your advisees to make informed decisions. They are adults, and, more importantly, they must live with their decisions. Help them to understand how to get the facts about a subject (such as choice of major or sophomore standing). Encourage them to reach out to faculty, staff, alumni, and fellow students and to seek out appropriate resources, before making final decisions.
- Know enough to recognize when an advisee needs help. At times, you may find that one or more of your advisees need help beyond your capabilities. In such cases, you need to realize your limitations and know how to make a referral to the advisor or other appropriate resources/offices.
- Be available. In order to help your advisees, you need to be there for them. You cannot provide, even the most, basic support to an advisee if the advisee cannot find you. Be sure to give your advisees your email address, phone number or another way to reach you and your advisor.
In addition, remember:
- Most communications have both an intellectual and an emotional component. Listen for the emotional message. If the emotional part of the message seems to be out of proportion or inconsistent with the intellectual part, you may need to examine this discrepancy before a rational decision can be made.
- Effective approaches to academic advising go beyond informing and begin to involve some counseling skills including helping and empowering.
- Respecting advisees does not mean that you must agree with all of their decisions. Your role is to help them make realistic decisions. If you have reason to believe that one of your advisees will fail or are making poor choices, you should honestly discuss this perception with them.
- Don't make decisions for your advisees. Rather, encourage them to use the appropriate resources to make smart decisions and to use reason to solve problems they make encounter.
Source: Adapted from the National Academic Advising Association
Listening as an Associate Advisor
Advising is more than giving information, it is a communication interaction. Advising usually involves two people who both deserve to be heard. The student generally needs something from the advisor, so his/her needs take precedence.
Advisors need to have good listening skills to help improve and strengthen relationships with advisees. These skills also increase the advisors value to advisees. Listening enables you to more accurately assess a situation and can help assure that you won't make a mistake.
An advisor's listening skills can also affect an advisees' feelings about being in school and their self-esteem (no one wants to feel as though their thoughts, opinions or concerns are unheeded). Good listening can also show that the institution cares about them, that they can rely on someone who will listen and help. Advisees tend to regard a good listener as more reliable and trustworthy, authoritative, and able. It also assures that the advisees are in a situation where they are treated with respect and as equals.
Sources: Adapted from: mediation@MIT and the National Academic Advising Association
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