Techniques for Listening
| PRE-LISTENING | WHILE-LISTENING | POST-LISTENING |
| Predecir | Escuchar | Preguntar con varias opciones |
| Poner en situación | Escuchar y poner ticks | Contestar preguntas |
| Escuchar en general | Escuchar y poner en orden | Tomar notas y rellenar huecos |
| Predecir según el título | Escuchar y actuar | Dar opiniones |
| Hablar sobre una imagen relacionada con el texto | Escuchar y dibujar | Hablar de una experiencia similar |
| Hablar sobre experiencias | Marcar en un multiple choice | Hacer un role play |
| Hablar sobre el tema | Completar una tabla | Escribir un texto sobre lo escuchado |
| Dar opiniones sobre el tema | Completar una tabla | Hacer un debate |
| Asociar vocabulario con el tema | Unir imágenes con el texto | |
| Escribir preguntas sobre el tema | Tomar notas | |
| Contestar preguntas cortas | ||
| Completar frases |
The Active Listening Skillset
6 Steps for More Effective Active Listening
Enhancing your active listening skillset involves more than just hearing someone speak. When you’re putting active listening skills to practice, you should be using these 6 techniques:
1. Pay attention.
One goal of active listening and being an effective listener is to set a comfortable tone that gives your coachee an opportunity to think and speak. Allow “wait time” before responding. Don’t cut coachees off, finish their sentences, or start formulating your answer before they’ve finished. Pay attention to your body language as well as your frame of mind when engaging in active listening. Be focused on the moment, make eye contact, and operate from a place of respect as the listener.
2. Withhold judgment.
Active listening requires an open mind. As a listener and a leader, be open to new ideas, new perspectives, and new possibilities when practicing active listening. Even when good listeners have strong views, they suspend judgment, hold any criticisms, and avoid interruptions like arguing or selling their point right away.
3. Reflect.
When you’re the listener, don’t assume that you understand your coachee correctly — or that they know you’ve heard them. Mirror your coachee’s information and emotions by periodically paraphrasing key points. Reflecting is an active listening technique that indicates that you and your counterpart are on the same page.
For example, your coachee might tell you, “Emma is so loyal and supportive of her people — they’d walk through fire for her. But no matter how much I push, her team keeps missing deadlines.”
To paraphrase, you could say, “So Emma’s people skills are great, but accountability is a problem.”
If you hear, “I don’t know what else to do!” or “I’m tired of bailing the team out at the last minute,” try helping your coachee label their feelings: “Sounds like you’re feeling pretty frustrated and stuck.”
4. Clarify.
Don’t be shy to ask questions about any issue that’s ambiguous or unclear when engaging in active listening. As the listener, if you have doubt or confusion about what your coachee has said, say something like, “Let me see if I’m clear. Are you talking about …?” or “Wait a minute. I didn’t follow you.”
Open-ended, clarifying, and probing questions are important active listening tools that encourage the coachee to do the work of self-reflection and problem solving, rather than justifying or defending a position, or trying to guess the “right answer.”
Examples include: “What do you think about …?” or “Tell me about …?” and “Will you further explain/describe …?”
When engaging in active listening, the emphasis is on asking, rather than telling. It invites a thoughtful response and maintains a spirit of collaboration.
You might say: “What are some of the specific things you’ve tried?” or “Have you asked the team what their main concerns are?” or “Does Emma agree that there are performance problems?” and “How certain are you that you have the full picture of what’s going on?”
5. Summarize.
Restating key themes as the conversation proceeds confirms and solidifies your grasp of the other person’s point of view. It also helps both parties to be clear on mutual responsibilities and follow-up. Briefly summarize what you’ve understood while practicing active listening, and ask the other person to do the same.
Giving a brief restatement of core themes raised by the coachee might sound like: “Let me summarize to check my understanding. Emma was promoted to manager, and her team loves her. But you don’t believe she holds them accountable, so mistakes are accepted and keep happening. You’ve tried everything you can think of, and there’s no apparent impact. Did I get that right?”
6. Share.
Active listening is first about understanding the other person, then about being understood as the listener. As you gain a clearer understanding of the other person’s perspective, you can begin to introduce your own ideas, feelings, and suggestions. You might talk about a similar experience you had, or share an idea that was triggered by a comment made previously in the conversation.
Once the situation has been talked through in this way, both you and your coachee have a good picture of where things stand. From this point, the conversation can shift into problem-solving: What hasn’t been tried? What don’t we know? What new approaches could be taken?
As the coach, continue to query, guide, and offer, but don’t dictate a solution. Your coachee will feel more confident and eager if they think through the options and own the solution.
Used in combination, these 6 active listening techniques are the keys in holding a coaching conversation.
Wonderful links
https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/five-essential-listening-skills-english-learners
https://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/leadership-four-steps-to-effective-listening
https://www.eslkidstuff.com/blog/top-10-lists/top-10-listening-activities-without-a-cd
https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/learning-english/activities-for-learners/?skill=listening
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/es/skills/listening
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-listening-activities/
