How Good Are Your Listening Skills?
We all know that being a good listener is vital if we want to have valuable friendships and successful personal relationships. With this in mind, I thought you might enjoy my latest article which looks at some important listening skills which we can all benefit from adopting:
When we have problems or difficulties which we want to talk about or discuss we usually gravitate towards a family member or friend who is a good listener. We value and prize a person who truly listens to us, who is interested in what we are saying and who is supportive of us. It’s not surprising that the characteristics of a good listener are found in one of the most influential counselling practices of our time – Person-Centred Therapy. We can all learn a great deal from its founder, Carl Rogers, and the particular counselling therapy he created, when we aim to be a good listener…..continued ….Are You A Good Listener? Learning From Rogers’ Person-Centred Counselling Theory.
I hope you found this helpful – do let me know if you get the chance!
What was lovely about this post, Ruth, was that just earlier today Jean and I were talking about this very same thing and continuing on to admit that listening to someone you love when at the same time you are worried about them requires more than being a good listener. It requires one to quieten inner worries, pause those worries in effect, and listen without the ‘mist’ of one’s worry hearing what one fears.
I was trying to remember something I was taught during management training within IBM back around 1974. If I recall, and that’s a bit of an ‘if’ these days, our visiting tutor was a professional counsellor and said there was a technique to quieten the mind if you were emotionally involved with the other person. It was something along the lines of having a word or sound that one inserted into one’s listening brain to pause the response.
In other words, even the smallest distraction would allow the brain to really hear what your loved one was saying.
The sound or word that’s coming to this ancient brain was something like ‘po’.
I promised Jean that I would try and dig out accurately what I was poorly recalling. Then I read this!
So am I making sense in all of this?
That’s so interesting Paul, do let me know if you track it down. It sounds like an effective distraction technique to, as you say, quieten the mind enough to listen effectively. I also agree with you about how difficult listening without judgement is when you’re close to the speaker. It almost takes a superhuman effort, especially when the words they speak may well affect you personally. Very difficult territory. We need all the help we can get in this area I think. Thanks so much for reading the article – really enjoyed your comment! 🙂
Such a great article, Ruth! Each one of the key principles Rogers offers are so good to take into consideration when trying to be a good listener. Being a genuinely good listener is not as simple as one would think. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much Julie – really pleased you enjoyed it. I completely agree, truly listening is hard work!! 🙂
Ruth, You have given us all some excellent points here on how to be a good listener.. Working as I do around a personal centred plan working within the Supporting of others, Listening is a key part of our job role. And to also note what isn’t being said.
learning to discern between being empathic and also being non judgemental is vital to enable trust to be built..
Again you touch upon a subject with which you hold much wisdom.
Thank you for sharing and apologies its taken me a while to get around to comment.
I hope you are well, and sending you my thoughts your way
Love and Blessings
Sue
Dear Sue, Thank you so much for your comment, I’m so pleased you found something valuable in the article. Your words give me a great lift and, as always, I appreciate your visit. I’ve just written a post to mention that I’m having a break from blogging until next year, Sue, due to my own health and also my Mum. I hope I’ll get around to visit you at some point, but if I don’t then I send you warm thoughts and hopes for the last month of this year and for the New Year to come. Much love to you Sue and thanks for your friendship through 2012. xxxx