Active Listening Overview

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to discuss an overview of active listening. So let's look at our key terms here to watch out for.

We have active listening, feedback, and suspending judgment. So let's start off by looking at what active listening is. It's a conflict resolution technique in which the listener sends constant feedback to the speaker indicating that the speaker's message has been received and understood or interpreted as intended.

So here we are engaging with the speaker in ways that we are letting them know that we are understanding what they're saying and we are interpreting it the same way. And we do this through giving feedback or nonverbal communication cues and asking questions. So let's look at what active listening is a little bit further.

Active listening is different than just your regular type of listening. When we are just plain listening, we are not giving interruptions. Although this may seem polite, we must make appropriate interruptions to engage in active listening. And so we want to interrupt the speaker politely or when appropriate and maybe ask a clarifying question.

Also, in listening, there is no nonverbal communication cues. So there is no eye contact. There is no facing speaker. There is no nodding of agreement, perhaps. But active listening does require that we give those nonverbal communication cues.

Also, listening does not require us to give any feedback, whereas active listening really requires us to give feedback. And feedback is indications that a message has been received and interpreted in a particular way. So we're letting the speaker know that we got their message and that we have interpreted it. And whether or not we interpreted it correctly, we give the feedback so we can get that clarification, if necessary.

So how do we become an active listener? Well, for one we ask questions. When the speaker is talking to us, we ask clarifying questions. We ask questions about their feelings, and therefore we need to acknowledge their feelings as well.

Maybe the speaker is seeming upset or happy. We need to point those out when we are listening to them. We also-- again, I can't emphasize enough-- use those nonverbal communication cues. So, giving eye contact, facing the speaker, or maybe, as in this picture, putting our hands on their shoulder to acknowledge sympathy or concern, perhaps.

And we're also suspending judgment. When we are suspending judgment, we are refraining from evaluation of an idea, situation, or person. So when somebody is talking to us and we are engaging in active listening, we are suspending judgment. We are not evaluating any ideas that we're hearing or the situation or even the person, perhaps. We can do that after the speaker is done letting us know what they want us to hear.

When we are active listening, I want to pull the red flag here and let you know that it's not the same as agreement. We can have agreement, but we can also have disagreement when we are engaging in active listening. Just because we are giving those nonverbal communication cues and giving feedback and suspending judgment doesn't mean we have to agree with the speaker. We can, but we do not have to.

So how can we use active listening during conflict? We can use it when we're having a relationship conflict.

So these two in the picture here, they're separate from each other. And maybe we can engage in the conflict a little bit better if we are facing each other, giving those nonverbal communication cues and feedback. And maybe we can clarify some of the issues that we're having within the conflict if we are engaging in active listening.

Conflict resolution is another important place in which we can utilize active listening during a conflict. As a conflict intervener, it's really important that we start out with those active listening skills right away. So we are giving eye contact to the speaker when they are talking. We are refraining from judgment. And we are also giving feedback.

And once we are demonstrating this to the parties, they can model our behavior. And hopefully that will be really effective for them in their situation and their conflict, and maybe help them in resolving it.

So now we've gone over active listening, let's see our key points. Active listening is a conflict resolution technique where we are letting the speaker know that we received their message and understand them as intended. We're also giving feedback where we are letting them know that, again, we received the message and interpreted it in a particular way.

We're also suspending judgment when we are engaging in active listening, rather. So we are refraining from evaluating any ideas or the situation, or even the person, when they're speaking with us.

So that's all I have for you today. I really hope that you've gained something and learned something. Thank you so much for taking the time out to view this. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.