What were you really into when you were a kid? Over five to ten minutes, the speaker describes a geometric image from a prepared set, and the listener tries to turn this description into a drawing without looking at the image. And in each pair, of course, team members will take turns being listener and talker. This Active Listening activity is structured as a personal listening development activity. It also promotes collaboration. This is a fun game in communication skills that will also give team members some creative freedom. Our non-verbal behavior and the way we speak is critical. Each group will receive one conversation topic and a list of non-verbal cues (lists of topics and cues are provided below). If you could be the CEO of any company, what company would you choose? How did this influence your learnings, rather than providing your own input? Shaikh Muhammad Ali - Islamabad, Pakistan, download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free. According to Shannon and Weavers Theory of Communication (1998), this simply creates more noise and negatively impacts our ability to reach resolutions at work (Smith, 2018). Discuss how the speaker felt to have your full attention. Tell us if any of these are particularly useful, and let us know if youve got tweaks for this current set of activities. A facial expression that conveys an emotion. This is a small group Active Listening game for adults. Perception of emotions is a key component of Mayer and Saloveys emotional intelligence framework and covers the ability to read others non-verbal cues as well as their potential moods (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Otherwise, the idea is identicalinformation gets misinterpreted thanks to noise, but we can improve our verbal communication and listening skills to minimize this risk. Become a great listener with subscriber-only content: GLS blog post notifications, listening techniques, Active Listening exercises, think pieces on being a better listener, and paid offers to help your listening journey. Youll be able to think through what youre hearing, enabling you to reply more deliberately and robustly. They showed that they understood how their patients were feeling to relate at an interpersonal level; where they didnt know, they at least made a stab at empathizing through educated guesses. Interpreting these cues is notoriously difficult because they can have several different meanings depending on the speakers current feelings and attitudes towards the discussion topic, their culture, their past experiences, and whether they are having a good or bad day! Rogers, C. R., & Farson, R. E. (1957). The only rule is that Participant 2 must not see the picture (or a photo of the picture). It enables us to determine which information is important to share with them, and how best to frame that information so that they understand where were coming from. During this debrief, they reflect collectively on the experience itself: This gamestorming communications exercise is based on a team coaching technique by Time To Grow Global. It can be on the pre-chosen topic or on a different one, but the activity must conclude with a debrief. It is simply amazing. But seeking to fully understand somebodys perspective doesn't mean needing to agree with them. The relative effectiveness of active listening in initial interactions. or, "What's the progress since our last catch-up?". Haertel, C., McWilliams, J., & Ma, R. (2005). Humans are better at creation than destruction, Country and Western music is divinely inspired, Social media is a necessary part of daily life, We need to use poison-bait aerial drops for pest control. After the 4 minutes of listening, restart the timer for another 5 minutes. For this exercise, everybody has a handout that summarizes the goals of the discussion. Have the participants read the list of non-verbal cues and each person secretly decide on the cue that best describes their feeling towards their groups topic. Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). A conversation of this kind can be quite absorbing. Benefits: In an objective sense, we need to extract information so we can channel our efforts accordingly. A process guide for training workshops focused on working in groups, communication, conflict resolution, community organising and conversation frameworks. - The ability to deliver information effectively. Dont make the pictures too detailed. Practicing it during our interactions with others enables us to validate their feelings and potentially avoid the stress of misunderstandings. These science-based tools will help you and those you work with build better social skills and better connect with others. How did you utilise the 2-minute collaboration pause? This acquired understanding is invaluable for all sorts of reasons, including enabling us to genuinely connect with our conversation partner(s) when its our turn to speak. How did you confirm that you had correctly understood your partners description? Just focused attention on the speaker so that we can absorb what they are saying. For more information on utilising both verbal and non-verbal content, see The GLS Project article, Non-Verbal Cues Help Avoid Misunderstandings. Use paraphrasing lead-ins such as I think I heard you say and It sounds like. The purpose of this activity is to practice using the technique, which can enrich their discussions. Goh, S. C. (1998). Your email address will not be published. Maguire, P., & Pitceathly, C. (2002). It only takes three iterations to uncover some very personal beliefs. . Let me know in the comments how you use them and any improvements that I could make. Communication exercises may not feel 100% natural at first, but they let us work withrather than live in fear ofthat discomfort. Why?! Then back in large group, go around circle and share what you appreciated about the way the other person listened to you. What is the most difficult part of being a [, What does that look like? or What might that look like in practice?, "How did you come to that opinion/conclusion?". Benefits: We dont need to look too far to find sources of workplace stress that might be impacting our colleagues. Talking is essentially a form of content delivery, and its not really communication unless we listen. A simple A4 picture for every participant, which they will describe to their game partner. Used with permission. After fifteen minutes of discussion, the watchers and talkers switch circlesthose who were listening before now sit on the inner circle for a fifteen-minute conversation. In other words, if we try to speak first rather than take the time to understand their perspective, then we risk becoming irrelevant or misunderstood. How has your life changed because of them? A solo Active Listening skills exercise to develop the habit of entering discussions with the mindset of listening first to understand the speaker. Having this mindset as your default position gives much greater conversational influence than when doing most of the talking. Inspired by the kids game Telephone, this exercise draws on different elements of effective communication between team members, while highlighting where things often go wrong. 4. Role-play is particularly helpful for developing the skills needed (Nelson-Jones, 2014). Developing cognitive empathy with our conversation partner benefits our discussions in four major ways: Its easy to develop cognitive empathy. Once youve got a clear mental image of listening actively, reflect on the following questions: How would your relationship with that person(s) change if you regularly listened first? Reference: Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Trainers' Manual, page 18. Allow 10 minutes for participants to do the following within their groups. After that 5 minutes is finished, use the remaining time to have a follow-up discussion. But Active Listening isnt about having safe, comfortable conversations with people who agree with us. Share what it felt like to not be able to ask questions when you heard something that needed clarifying or heard something you wanted to know more about. Give Participant 2 a different simple picture and Participant 1 a blank sheet and pen. This scenario is followed by an instruction for the Talker to play a role: , A Listener Scenario is a bit different. From your larger group of co-workers, let them form smaller groups of about 3-6 participants and tell them their task is to produce a unique comic strip, with one frame from each person. Very useful for my Communicare sessions. Deadlines, role boundaries, budgets, and the why, how, what of tasks. You will need a volunteer for this exercise. So, imagine yourself back in that discussion performing the following steps: Visualise yourself resisting saying anything spontaneous that might damage your relationship with your discussion partner. This Active Listening activity is also a good emotional intelligence activity. For privacy information see the About page. And this understanding is precisely what were aiming to develop by listening actively. It reduces the possibility of us misunderstanding them. When it comes to tasks and expectations, it goes without saying that clarity helps us avoid lots of unwanted things. Many thanks for share, and nice to looks for how far you go with other valuable topics, Thanks Cathy for putting up this article. Record your thoughts on the notepad. Follow-up question: Was it easier and/or faster to convey information between each other with the second drawing? Asking Questions To Seek Information and Clarify Understanding. Because communication is so multi-faceted, weve included a selection of different activity types. Key communication skills and how to acquire them. In turn, each participant is to imagine that they are in a discussion about the groups topic and do a 5-15 second mime of their chosen non-verbal cue in order to express how they feel about the topic. Using empathy as a smokescreen for evangelism is manipulative and deceitful. Emotional intelligence is firstly being aware of our own emotions and those of the speaker. Emotional intelligence. So, enjoy! Only speak in order to ask genuine questions. This exercise is done with another person. Examples include Omit the Obvious, Train of Words, and Blindfold Walk. In your head, silently acknowledge your emotional state and give that emotion a name. Facilitator asks group what they could have done to listen well. This activity is a slight twist on Chinese Whispers in that it uses a complex set of instructions rather than just a sentence. Were you distracted by the other pairs and if so how? Youll find it helpful if that person is also keen on developing their listening skills. Effective information delivery helps us define goals, transfer knowledge, and successfully accomplish shared tasks. Shannon, C. E. (1998). If youre a cross-functional team, why not try out an activity that challenges assumptions? Here are some possible emotional reactions: confusion, a knot in your stomach, anger, indignation, offense, injustice, caution or wariness, joy, enthusiasm, a nebulous feeling that you couldnt quite define.. Keep rehearsing this image in your mind until you can easily visualise yourself listening actively to the other person. Possible imagined response: How does your idea solve our situation? Its best if this isnt inappropriate for the workplace, but at the same time, it doesnt have to be work-related. The best way to diffuse a tense situation is to use active listening - let the customer know you hear what they are saying. What might have contributed to this confusion? Clarify Understanding IV. Give Participant 1 a simple picture. What are some things you want to accomplish before you die? Invite students to role play the scenarios. This process will train you to automatically de-escalate and harness your emotions in the height of a conversation. 1. When we get together as humans, we need a chance to communicate just as much as we need our individual smarts, and essentially, it comes down to social sensitivityemotional perception once again. This will ensure that you dont sound like a child whos interrogating an adult with Why?! An animated or subdued gesture that conveys an emotion. Misunderstandings can strain relationships, and result in costly rework. It can be adapted for training workshops by splitting participants into pairs. It is not a method for creating opportunities to talk about themselves. What Active Listening techniques went well? Is your colleague overwhelmed, perhaps? The objective of this Active Listening activity is to increase your emotional intelligence by heightening your awareness of emotions that emerge during discussions. zDevelop the character. 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