There are many different basic skills which will be elaboretd here in these posts, but here in this place I will mainly focus on the first one of the skills, which is:
Active Listening:
Listening is a prerequisite for all other helping responses and strategies. Listening should precede whatever else is done. When a helper fails to listen, the client may be discouraged from self-exploring, the wrong issue may be discussed or a may be proposed pre-maturely.
Listening involves three steps: receiving a message, processing a message and sending a message.
Each client message is a stimulus to be received and processed by the helper. Reception of a message is covert process - that is, we cannot see how or what the helper receives. Failure to receive the entire message may occur when the helper stops attending. Reception of a message may be thought of as contemplative listening. A prerequisite for contemplative listening is the ability to be silent. Interestingly enough the same letters that spell LISTEN also spell SILENT. When we are truly silent, we are not focused on what we are going to say next. Instead we are creating space for ourselves to receive a message and for clients to send a message. Unfortunately because our world is so noisy, true silence is uncomfortable for many of us and must be cultivated with daily practice. Turning off cell phones and pagers and sitting silently with oneself for a few minutes a day is a great way to develop contemplative listening skills.
Once a message is received, it must be processed in some way. Processing, like reception, is covert: it goes on within the helper's mind and is not visible to the outside world except, perhaps, from the helper's non-verbal cues. Processing includes thinking about the message and pondering its meaning. It's important because a helper's cognitions, self-talk and mental (covert) preparation and visualization set the stage for overt responding. Errors in message processing often occur when helper's biases or blind spots prevent them from acknowledging parts of a message or from interpreting a message without distortion.
Helpers may hear what they want to hear instead of the actual message sent. Processing a message may be thought of as Reflective listening. In this phase of listening, we are listening to ourselves and focusing our attention inward in order to develop sensitivity to our internal voice. Taking a few breaths before responding to a client's message and then, after the breaths, asking oneself, "What wants to be said next?" instead of "What do I want to say next?" is a good way to monitor and practice reflective listening.
The third step involves the verbal and non-verbal messages sent by a helper. Sometimes a helper may receive and process a message accurately but have difficulty sending a message because of lack of skills. Fortunately you can learn to use listening responses to send messages. When sending messages back to our clients, we are engaging in listening that is connective- that is, listening that in some way connects us with our clients.
When we are working with clients who are culturally different from us, understanding may be even more challenging because of cultural nuances in communication and expression. While breakdowns in communication often happen between members who share the same culture, the problem becomes exacerbated between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds.
To finish this part :
Listening is the art by which we use empathy to reach across the space between us. Genuine listening means suspending memory, desire, judgement and for a few moments at least, existing for the other person.
After this we will go through some verbal listening responses that you can use to send messages to a client and enrich the process of counselling. These are: Clarification, Paraphrasing, Reflection and Summarization.
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