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Communication is not a one-way process. It requires, at least, someone to give the message and someone to receive it. Demonstrating active listening shows the speaker that their message is being both received and understood. This exercise will help team members gain an understanding of the five components of active listening and begin demonstrating these.
In this exercise, team members are asked to demonstrate one of the five components of active listening during a group discussion. This exercise will take around 20 minutes to complete.
Learning Objectives
Team members will be able to:
- identify the five components of active listening
- demonstrate active listening in conversations
Facilitator Guidance
For this exercise, it is best if the team is arranged into groups of five or six. This is so one person can start and keep the conversation going, and the other five participants can join in and demonstrate a component of active listening.
The five components of active listening are:
- test understanding
- question
- building
- feedback
- summarizing
Suggested Resources
- pieces of paper (each with one of the five components of active listening written on it)
What to Do (10 minutes)
- Introduce the exercise, outlining its aim and objectives.
- Arrange the team into groups of five or six and give all but one a piece of paper outlining the five components of active listening.
- The participants should keep what is written on their pieces of paper a secret from the rest of the group.
- Ask either the person who did not get a piece of paper, or one of the five group members if there are only five people in the group, to begin a conversation. This can be about anything the participants wish to discuss. Alternatively, you may want to appoint a subject for discussion.
- During the discussion, those with pieces of paper should demonstrate the component of active listening that is written on their piece of paper.
Review Activity and Apply Learning (10 minutes)
Once the exercise has run its course or the 10 minutes are up, bring everyone back together in one group.
Facilitate a discussion around participants’ experiences of the exercise. You may want to ask:
- Did everyone feel as if the others were listening to them?
- Can group members identify who had which component?
- Were participants subtle in demonstrating active listening or did some seem really unnatural and over-the-top?
- If participants were demonstrating active listening what does not listening look like?
- Why is it important for people to demonstrate active listening in work situations?
The Components of Active Listening
1. Testing Understanding
Testing your understanding involves clarifying what the speaker has said.
2. Questioning
By asking probing questions, you can demonstrate how well you have been listening and encourage the speaker to say more.
3. Building
Effective listening builds on someone's proposal or idea. Listening is not about being passive and absorbing information, it is adding to the listener's point of view with ideas of your own, whilst staying with the original idea.
4. Feedback
Active listening involves giving feedback to the speaker about how their message affected you. Reflecting back feelings and emotions gives you the opportunity to check you have understood the feelings of the person speaking.
5. Summarizing
Summarizing is a critical skill for active listening. It clarifies and reinforces the message for both listener and speaker, it finishes off one subject, creating the opportunity to move onto another.
