Do you really know how to listen? It's our belief that the most fundamental human need, beyond basic survival, is the need to be heard and understood. This workshop focuses on building the skill to really listen and understand the perspective of other human beings.

1. LISTENING SKILLS and
EMPATHIC COMMUNICATION

2. Listening skills – Are pivotal to:
Relationship Enhancement
Human Resources Development
Parenting
Problems Solving
Education
Multi‐Cultural Sensitivity

3. What do good listening skills look/feel like?
Who is the best empathic communicator you know?
Why?

4. Few of us really know how to listen!
Through effective listening we can better understand:
Needs
Feelings
Interests
Goals
Concerns

5. There is an appropriate time to listen!
What does it mean to be a good listener?
Are you good at listening? Are you sure?

6. Empathic Listening – Definition
The most fundamental need of any human being is to be heard
and understood!
When have you been misunderstood? What did it feel like?

7. Learning Objectives:
Understand what it means to actively listen
Be more sensitive
Stop talking and listen
Build deeper relationships
Manage and resolve conflict
Get your own needs met

8. Training Partners
Honest
Believe in yourself and your partner
Be willing to give feedback
Dyads

9. Program Overview:
Four Phases:
Taking Stock and Attending
Paraphrasing Content
Understanding Emotion
Self‐Expression

10. Taking Stock!
When do you listen best?
When do you listen worst?
Biggest mistake you’ve ever made?
What were the ramifications of your mistakes?

11. Attending Skills:
Square‐up
Lean‐in
Eye contact
Open body
Eliminate distractions

12. Paraphrasing Content
Give undivided attention
Genuine desire to understand
Truly let others know you heard and understood them

13. Paraphrasing Content
A good listener must:
Listen in order to help
Gather information without asking questions
Suspend personal judgment
Resist distractions

14. A good response:
Your own words
Lets your Partner know you have heard them
Do NOT ask questions
Will be very awkward

15. Exercise – Gary and Volunteer
Attend to each other
Take turn as a listener and a talker
Discuss – Angry/Upset
Go slow – 2‐3 sentences and stop
Listener – in your own words/no mimic
SIMPLE
“So what I hear you saying is…” or “In other words…”

16. Roadblocks to Empathic Communication
• Ordering/commanding
• Warning/threatening
• Moralizing/preaching
• Advising/giving solutions
• Judging/criticizing, blaming
• Praising/Agreeing

17. Roadblocks to Empathic Listening Continued…
• Name‐calling/ridiculing
• Analyzing/diagnosing/interpreting
• Reassuring/sympathizing
• Probing/questioning
• Diverting/sarcasm/withdrawal

18. Responding to Feelings
Sympathy vs. Empathy
Intellectual understanding
Not – feeling along with the person
Empathy is more helpful
Prompts more discussion
Leads to action

19. Categories of Feeling Words
FEELINGS – word association
Exercise
Simply reflect content – fools rush in
Speaker – let them know if they’re correct
Do not be afraid to over‐do it!

20. Self‐Expression
Become an Agent of change
Facilitating insight and action
Lead change – without advising, judging, diagnosing
Surface assumptions, gaps, distortions
If you can help a person identify how they feel, you can help
them create meaning
Active Listening Scripts

21. Basic Rules for Self‐Expression
Clarify
“I” messages
Positive vs. Negative
Your version
Avoid overgeneralization
Define problems in your terms

22. Basic Rules for Self‐Expression
Clarify
“I” messages
Positive vs. Negative
Your version
Avoid overgeneralization
Define problems in your terms

23. Brining it all together!
From dinner – How do you really influence someone?
Tell them your story
What is your Partner most proud of?
Tell your story
Debrief
Active Listening Script for Business

24. How to truly communicate a difficult message
Inference
Data
Rationale
Reaction
Negative correlation with Anger and Communication

25. What worked?
What was easy for you/natural?
Were did you struggle the most?
Who do you need to have the best listening skills with to be
effective?