Empathic Listening - Effective Listening

levels of listening - 'effective listening'

1. passive/not listening - noise in background - ignoring

2. pretend listening - also called 'responsive listening' - using stock nods and smiles and uhum, yes, of course, etc.

3. biased/projective listening - 'selective listening' and intentionally disregarding/dismissing the other person's views

4. misunderstood listening - unconsciously overlaying your own interpretations and making things fit when they don't

5. attentive listening - personally-driven fact gathering and analysis often with manipulation of the other person

6. active listening - understanding feelings and gathering facts for largely selfish purposes

7. empathic listening - understanding and checking facts and feelings, usually to listener's personal agenda

8. facilitative listening - listening, understanding fully, and helping, with the other person's needs uppermost

Empathic listening implies that :

You are listening with full attention to the sounds, and all other relevant signals, including:

* tone of voice

* other verbal aspects - e.g., pace, volume, breathlessness, flow, style, emphasis

* facial expression

* body language

* cultural or ethnic or other aspects of the person which would affect the way their communications and signals are affecting you

* feeling - not contained in a single sense - this requires you to have an overall collective appreciation through all relevant senses (taste is perhaps the only sense not employed here) of how the other person is feeling

* you able to see and feel the situation from the other person's position

You are also reacting and giving feedback and checking understanding with the speaker. You will be summarising and probably taking notes and agreeing the notes too if it's an important discussion. You will be honest in expressing disagreement but at the same time expressing genuine understanding, which hopefully (if your listening empathy is of a decent standard) will keep emotions civilized and emotionally under control even for very difficult discussions. You will be instinctively or consciously bringing elements of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and Transactional Analysis into the exchange. It will also be possible (for one who knows) to interpret the exchange from the perspective of having improved the relationship and mutual awareness in terms of the Johari Window concept.

REF 3:

Salem, Richard. "Empathic Listening." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2003

Talks about the role of empathic listening in mediation.

When the mediator comes onto the scene, he or she continuously models good conflict-management behaviors, trying to create an environment where the parties in conflict will begin to listen to each other with clear heads. For many disputants, this may