CPFT Academy

Developing listening skills

Listening  ‘Karen Kincaid OD Practitioner

“We all listen through our own filters .Listen and speaking are circular within a context - e.g if I’ve had a bad message or a good message it will make a difference as to how I listen

Listening is a skill - it requires conscious effort. - you can practice and you can get better at it

We listen though our filters of our culture, language, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, expectations and intentions most of the time we are completely unconscious of these filters. (ladder of inference)

We all listen differently because all of those things for each of us are different so we are all listening from a different place - listening from our own reality which is different from each others.

 

Practice listening using Receive, Appreciate, Summarise and Ask questions  (RASA) model

R - receive for instance (you need to be looking at an individual, facing them - not listening if you are looking at your phone, looking at emails or looking in a different direction). A great gift to give someone is to give your full attention and listen in that way.

A - appreciate- will be noticed from body language - natural mirroring of pace and tone, nods and gestures.

S - summarise for instance so what you’ve said is this - am I right?,  so - we’ve all agreed this we can move on to that…etc . This helps to keep the conversation in focus.

A - ask - ask questions all the way through - check in and use open-ended questions.

 

Resources for Listening

1.     Eric Van Slyke developed  Six Levels of Listening   which  begin with  passive listening, whereby individuals are hardly listening, to empathic listening, which is listening with your ears, mind, eyes and heart.

https://ds.amu.edu.et/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/3482/01074.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

2.     Julian Treasure claims that we listen 60% of the time and retain 25% of what we hear. He attributes noise to the listening problem.

Attached video (Julian Treasure)

Julian Treasure - secrets of conscious listening and powerful speaking. https://www.juliantreasure.com/