Helpful Listening and Responding
It is common for your friends, students, or family members to go to you with their problems.
There are five common ways of responding in these situations, and although none of these can be considered good or bad, effective or ineffective, knowing how to properly respond makes a difference in how much help you are able to extend to your loved one.
Advising and Evaluating
The most common response when a friend approaches you with their problem is to give advice or make a judgment on the rightness of their thoughts and actions. These types of responses tend to be moralizing, suggestive, corrective, and evaluative. They imply what you think your friend needs to do to solve their problem.
While these can be helpful when they are relevant and given at the right time, the following are often their disadvantages:
They can build barriers, as your friend may consider the advice threatening, which can make them defensive, in turn making them reject your advice, resent your influence, and become indecisive. They may also keep your friend from exploring the problem.
They can make your friend feel inferior.
They imply that you are generalizing your friend’s problem and that you don’t care to understand further what their problem is really all about.
They can discourage your friend from taking responsibility for their own concerns.
They can make your friend feel that they have to meet certain expectations to prove their worth.
What you can do instead:
Refrain from using the following phrases:
“Don’t you think..?”
“You should”
Refrain from giving evaluations and advices when you’re just beginning to help someone understand and solve their problems.
Analyzing and Interpreting
When you try to analyze or interpret your friend’s problems, you are trying to teach or tell your friend what their problem means. You are trying to analyze why they do the things they do and try to provide an explanation for such. These can be indicated by statements such as “A ha! Now I know what your problem is!” or “The reason you are anxious is”
However, interpreting and analyzing your friend’s feelings has the following disadvantages:
It can make your friend defensive.
It can discourage them from revealing their feelings and thoughts for fear of them being analyzed and interpreted.
It implies that you know your friend better than they know themselves.
What you can do instead:
Help your friend think about themselves and their feelings.
Reassuring and Supporting
Responding in a reassuring and supportive manner to a child, for example, indicates that you want to sympathize, reassure, and reduce the intensity of their feelings. However, by doing this, you’re often denying their feelings. For example, saying things like “Things will be better tomorrow” often imply a lack of understanding or interest.
What you can do instead:
Listen carefully and help clarify the reasons for your child’s problem, as well as the possible solutions for it.
When you feel that your child really needs reassurance and support, try not to give them by saying statements like “You shouldn’t feel the way you do.”
Questioning and Probing
Questioning or probing is helpful for people who want to discuss their concerns with you. However, it can also indicate to the other person that you want to get more information, guide the discussion along particular issues, or bring them to a certain conclusion or realization that you have in mind.
What you can do instead:
Ask open questions, which encourage the other person to answer with more detail and to share their thoughts and feelings. An example would be, “How do you like your new school?”
Refrain from asking closed questions, which can be answered by a yes or no. An example is, “Do you like your new school?”
Refrain from asking why questions. Asking someone about the reasons for their actions would be futile as most people don’t know why they do the things they do. It can make them defensive and it can make them justify rather than explore their actions. It can also indicate disapproval or giving advice. For example, asking your student, “Why did you skip school yesterday?” is like saying “I don’t think you should have skipped school yesterday.”
Ask what, when, where, and how questions.
Instead of asking questions, you can also use reflective statements. For example, instead of asking, “Do you like art?,” saying “You really like art” can keep the other person talking and also indicates that you understand what they are saying.
Paraphrasing and Understanding
Giving a reflecting and understanding response indicates to the other person that you want to understand their thoughts and feelings, which in effect is like asking the other person to verify whether or not you understood their concerns correctly. You can do this when you’re not sure you understood the other person’s thoughts and feelings, when you want to ensure that the other person heard what you just said, and to reassure the other person that you are trying to understand them. It may also be helpful for you to try to understand the underlying meanings and feelings that come with the words.
References
Johnson, D. W., (2009). Reaching Out (10th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
Quotes on listening. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.leadershipnow.com/listeningquotes.html
