Holding your opinions until the other party asks for them demonstrates that you value their input and respect their wishes. Otherwise, it is likely best to simply listen and give small acknowledgments. Find jobs. Company reviews. Find salaries.
Upload your resume. Sign in. Career Development. What is empathic listening? Qualities of an empathic listener. Benefits of empathic listening. How to listen empathically. Create a comfortable space for sharing. The Harappa EAR—Empathy, Authenticity and Respect—of listening is an effective strategy that you can follow to practice empathic listening.
Based on this framework, here are some ways to be more empathetic as a listener:. These nonverbal cues are essential attributes of empathic listening. You have to look for signs that tell you more than what the speaker is conveying with their words.
This will help you pay close attention to them. Many times, we make the mistake of talking over someone or not waiting for them to complete their sentences. Creating a space where someone can talk uninterrupted will make your coworkers rely on you and reach out to you when they need someone to talk to.
Notice tone of voice, body language, and other clues to go beyond the words and gain insight into emotions. Show that you are listening carefully. Think about your posture and nonverbal messages.
Pepper in supportive body language like eye contact, nodding, and other signals as appropriate to advertise your attentiveness without interrupting. Pay attention to the context and quality of the silence before responding.
The individual might be thinking about what to say next or may need a few silent moments to rein in emotions. Restate and paraphrase. Keep that nonjudgmental and respectful spirit, and give the person time to respond.
Respond based on that person, situation, and moment. Follow up. Certainly, this is an aspect of empathy. We prefer to define empathy, however, as it is often used in psychology: the process of attending to another so the individual feels heard in a non-judgmental way. Empathic listening requires that we accompany a person in her moment of sadness, anguish, self-discovery, challenge or even great joy!
When an individual feels understood, an enormous emotional burden is lifted; stress and defensiveness are reduced; and clarity increases. Listening Skills in Interpersonal Communication. We spend a large portion of our waking hours conversing and listening. When two friends or colleagues have an engaging dialogue, they will often compete to speak and share ideas. Certainly, listening skills play an important role is such stimulating exchanges. When it comes to empathic listening, we do not vie to be heard, nor do we take turns speaking.
Rather, we are there to motivate and cheer the other person on. Empathic listening skills require a different subset of proficiencies than conversing, and it is certainly an acquired skill.
Many individuals, at first, find the process somewhat uncomfortable. Furthermore, people are often surprised at the exertion required to become a competent listener.
Once the skill is attained, there is nothing automatic about it. In order to truly listen, we must set aside sufficient time to do so. Perhaps the root of the challenge lies here. Empathic listening is incompatible with being in a hurry, or with the fast paced world around us. Such careful listening requires that we, at least for the moment, place time on slow motion and suspend our own thoughts and needs. Clearly, there are no shortcuts to empathic listening.
Some of the dialogues in this paper are videotape transcripts made possible by generous volunteers. It is my goal to give life to some of these clips, so as to better illustrate what it means to indeed listen empathetically. The purpose of this paper, then, is to further explicate and describe empathic listening, as well as some of the skill subsets involved. We challenge the reader to temporarily put aside any preconceived notions about effective listening.
In order to more clearly illustrate empathic listening, we will portray both positive and negative examples. Effective listening and attending skills can be applied to all of our interpersonal and business relationships.
We will become more effective listeners as we practice at home, in our business dealings, and in other circles. One of the greatest gifts we can give another is that of truly listening. Different approaches to listening. There are different approaches to providing assistance.
One helping model involves a three-step process: 1 attentive listening, 2 asking effective diagnostic questions, and 3 offering a prescription, or solution. Slowly, or sometimes quite abruptly, people move from listening to prescribing.
It is not uncommon, under some circumstances, for a person to focus on the third of these steps: offering advice sometimes even when none is sought. In other situations, individuals may utilize the first two steps. Perhaps most uncommon is an emphasis on listening alone. You can probably imagine situations where each of these approaches may make sense.
When there is little time, or in dangerous situations, people may offer advice even when they were not asked. For matters of a technical or medical nature, the three-way process of listening, diagnosing, and prescribing is often preferable.
After prescribing, it is helpful to take a step back and determine how the individual feels about the proposed solution. A related approach involves going through the first two steps and then involving the troubled person in examining alternative solutions.
Finally, for more personal matters, where the solution is owned by the individual facing the challenge, a listening approach is most advantageous. This is where empathic listening fits in. Let us consider these phases in reverse order. Prescriptive Phase. The majority of individuals, while they may fully begin with intentions of listening, often quickly transition into the diagnostic and prescriptive phases.
People are accustomed to solving problems and often listen with this frame of mind. Others, instead, focus on sympathy. Sharing a story of how we had to face a similar challenge is not much better. Nor is being quiet so a person will hurry up and finish.
None of these are helpful responses to venting. Each reflects, among other things, a certain amount of impatience. Maybe we would have solved the dilemma had we been in her place. Different personality types certainly approach specific challenges in predictable ways, with likewise foreseeable results. For instance, some would not dream of confronting a friend, but instead would let an irritation fester inside.
Others might have trouble keeping their opinions to themselves. Have you noticed that some of your acquaintances seem to repeatedly fall into the same types of predicaments, giving the impression they did not learn from the last episode?
Each of us has different personality traits and skill sets that permit us to solve some challenges easier than others. Instead, when we find ourselves in the same predicament, we often feel just as unsure about how to proceed. On the way home from a father-daughter date, I asked one of my daughters if I could give her some free advice.
On another occasion, another young woman came to see me. She never greets me, and that hurts. She used to be very kind. I should have instead kept that comment to myself. A few weeks later she came to see me again.
This time I listened empathically. Our effectiveness as a listener is often lost if we solve the problem before the person we are attempting to help does. Let us listen in on their conversation. When I try and speak to her, give her advice, then she… changes topics.
That is the problem I have, that I seek her out but she does not mind me. Aaliyah, however, takes control of the conversation once again. Because Shanise has been showing empathy to this point, Aaliyah forgives the interruption. If instead, the individual continues to ask for suggestions, we can help them explore options.
John interrupted to say that he did not want to play the listening game—he simply wanted a solution. This was an ideal opportunity to illustrate some vital points. When workshop participants listen to people with real hardships, everything they have learned so far often flies out the window. Rather than analyze the quality of the listening, participants are all too often ready to suggest additional solutions.
But not before being warned that they were entering the prescribe phase, which I have labeled red, for danger. Suggestions started flying. John admitted that he would have preferred to continue to think aloud with the support of the class participants.
Sympathy is quite different than empathy. It often springs more from our desire for normality, than for helping someone. You know you felt terrible; you felt that the whole world had caved in on her.
But what did you say? What did you show? Some of the most frequent responses include: Your internal beauty is more important than outward appearances.
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