Assignment:
Purpose This exercise is designed to help you understand the dynamics of active listening in conversations and to develop active listening skills.
Instructions: For each of the four vignettes presented below, student teams or students working individually) will compose three statements that demonstrate active listening. Specifically, one statement will indicate that you show empathy for the situation, the second asks for clarification and detail in a nonjudgmental way, the third statement will provide nonevaluative feedback to the speaker. Here are details about each of these three types of responses.
Showing empathy Acknowledge feelings. Sometimes it sounds like the speaker wants you to agree with him/her but, in reality, they mainly want you to understand how they feel Acknowledging feelings" involves taking in their statements, but looking at the "whole message" including body language, tone of voice, and level of arousal, and trying to determine what emotion they are conveying. Then you let them know that you realize they are feeling that emotion by just acknowledging it In a sentence.
Asking for clarification and detail while withholding your judgment and own opinions. This conveys that you are making a good effort to understand and not just trying to push your opinions onto them. To formulate a relevant question in asking for more clarification, you will have to listen carefully to what they say. Frame your question as someone trying to understand in more detail, often asking for a specific example is useful. This also helps the speaker evaluate their own opinions and perspective.
Providing non-evaluative feedback feeding back the message you heard. This will allow the speaker to determine if he/she really got the message across to you and help prevent troublesome miscommunication. It will also help the speaker become more aware of how he/she is coming across to another person (self- evaluation). Just think about what the speaker is conveying and paraphrase it in your own words, and say it back to the speaker (without judging the correctness or merit of what they said), asking him/her if that is what they meant.