Active listening

A response to the Misunderstood Activity
created by Kate MacIsaac (@kmacisaac)

Number of views: 163


I facilitate and teach workshops to a variety of folks around campus about mental health and supporting students. A concept that is often misunderstood is active listening. Active listening is a skill and strategy that helps the listener gain accurate information, shows care and compassion, and can allow the speaker to de-escalate, process, and find solutions. What I hear sometimes in training sessions is that active listening takes too much time, or oversteps boundaries into a “counselling” role. I think some contributing factors to these misconceptions are thinking any personal issues are “not my business”,  some fear of not knowing what to do next, and feeling pressured for time. The impact of not taking the time to listen in a helping capacity is that it can lead to miscommunication, giving inaccurate or irrelevant information, or the other person not wanting to come for help again.

An analogy for active listening skills is using a recipe to make something new. The recipe provides the information needed to move forward. Likewise, active listening gives a helper the information they need to assist someone in finding what they’re looking for or navigating a problem. If you jump in too early without reading the whole recipe (or listening to the whole story), you might get 3/4 of the way through and realized you’re missing a key ingredient (or giving advise, resources, etc. for the wrong issue). The ingredients are the skills required such as time, invitational skills, reflecting skills, and compassion. Using these ingredients and allowing a story to unfold creates mutual understanding of a plan for next steps…or the icing on the cake.

Example for "Active listening":
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