At the individual level, we can make conscious use of this EQ skill to gauge how others are feeling. Name things that you noticed they did well. Depaulo, B. M., & Friedman, H. S. (1998). Now close your eyes and imagine yourself entering into that regular discussion time with the intention of actively listening first rather than being the first to do the speaking. Youll need more than 9 participants for this activity, as well as paper, drawing, and coloring materials for each colleague. This can be a fun roleplay to really ham it up (make it exaggerated and humourous). In this article, you will find 15 communication exercises, games, and tips to help you improve teamwork and collaboration in your workplace. This Active Listening activity is designed for training workshops. Together, the pairs can come up with more productive, empathetic, and appropriate responses, with the acting experience fresh in mind. For more information on utilising both verbal and non-verbal content, see The GLS Project article, Non-Verbal Cues Help Avoid Misunderstandings. Practice Makes Perfect V. Uncovering Assumptions Dealing with resistance. Why might that be? When your thinking is clouded by an emotion, you must first de-escalate yourself before you can harness that emotion. Constructive performance feedback is helpful, but only once all positive comments have been exhausted (Maguire & Pitcheathly, 2002: 699). This facilitator simply keeps the game on track and gets the discussion going afterward. This worksheet provides role play exercises to help with practicing active listening advocacy skills. An Active Listening skills activity for pairs (or done with a volunteer). 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. Otherwise, the idea is identicalinformation gets misinterpreted thanks to noise, but we can improve our verbal communication and listening skills to minimize this risk. To really grasp how big of an impact it has, we can touch on some of the theory. Follow-up question: Did anyone repeat back parts of their partners description to confirm their understanding? Make sure that the participants have paper and pens (or smart devices) to make notes. [3]. They might be up to their ears in work, or their colleagues complaints might seem trivial. Red Light, Green Light; Simon Says; Musical Chairs; 4. In a larger group of participants, this can be done multiple times as players pair up with different conversation partners. We cant stop these emotions from appearing. What do you appreciate about them? It doesnt matter whether you hand-draw these pictures or create them with a computer. What would be the most ethical way to give away five million dollars? Follow-up question: What could you have done to overcome any differences in understanding? Hello, Im Andrew Ward and Im the Kiwi guy writing most of the stuff on this website. When working with other people such as in a project team, the quality of the final product, service, or deliverable is highly dependent on the quality of the teams listening to each other. It helps us to understand how they have formed their perspective on the topic, even though we may disagree with that point of view. Put even more simply, we make work a nicer place to be while avoiding unnecessary conflict. Between them, they need to decide the plot of the comic, who will be carrying out which tasks, and what the frames will contain. These games have been around for decades and are still fantastic for teaching active listening skills. Then, let them share the story of what they did with it; When onboarding new people, invite the group to bring in an object which symbolizes their wishes for the new team member. Step-by-step instructions are provided. Youll need a list of topics for people to act out, then invite players to break off into groups of two. Shannon, C. E. (1998). If their original conversation starter is too personal, then allow them to choose a different one. They can be one-on-one or team exercises, but the goal is the same: they help us develop our interpersonal skills and improve our capacity to relate. Compared to profits, losses, and even risk, it is intangible. After theyve pitched the ideal vacation spot in the space of a few minutes, the pair discuss how accurately the listener understood the talker. Clarify when you catch yourself jumping to conclusions. Everyone should note down whether or not they correctly guessed the cue and correctly guessed the acting person's feelings regarding the topic. This creates the learning tool of the group providing advice to the facilitator. Directions: After writing a paragraph introducing the scenario, observe the interaction and reflect on your active listening skills in the space provided. A process guide for training workshops focused on working in groups, communication, conflict resolution, community organising and conversation frameworks. At the end of 4 minutes you may speak. Benefits: As discussed, information delivery is crucial, but our focus here is opening up discussions. Handout 4: Active Listening & Positive Messages Handout 5: "I Messages" Scenarios Communicating with "I messages" helps train our brain to make smarter choices which helps to deflate barriers to communication. Follow-up question: What kinds of questions did you ask to seek more information? Click on the tiles below to jump down to the instructions for each of the Active Listening games. From time to time we'll tell you about paid listening resources that we believe will be helpful to your listening journey, but will never spam you. Describe some contexts where facial expressions play a particularly important role in communication? Work engagement: An emerging concept in occupational health psychology. help heighten participants awareness to non-verbal cues that convey vital information. Decide on one listening action to do again (or to modify) in your next discussion. And lets make listening fashionable. (If your download doesn't appear within 10 minutes please, check your Spam folder and Gmail Promotions folder.). Discuss any other thoughts about this Active Listening exercise. This exercise introduces I statements, which describe others behavior objectively while allowing the speaker to express the impact on their feelings. Follow-up question: Reflecting on that situation, what could you have done to better understand that cue? The listener uses effective listening and makes appropriate responses back to the speaker. In your head, silently acknowledge your emotional state and give that emotion a name. The way I feel about the terrorist attacks on September 11. Ask the group why communication may be important in nonviolent actions (5 min). How did repeating the why question deepen your understanding of your discussion partners perspective? What about their dynamics? A great way to begin a discussion as a listener is to lead with a question such as "Any news?" The group then lists the listening stoppers they noticed. To get started improving your (or your team's, or your student's) communication skills, give these 5 activities a try. Describe a book thats had an impact on your life. What Active Listening techniques went well? Briefly reflect on what did and didnt work. Drawing on empirical literature on communication skills in the workplace, we can look at Maguire and Pitcheathlys (2002) study of doctors for a good example. At the height of a discussion its very difficult to apply new techniques such as harnessing your emotions while trying to stay calm and avoid reacting impulsively to what were hearing (and observing non-verbally). In this game, one colleague has a full 60 seconds to rant about something which irks them. Active listening is a system of opening and maintaining communications through the use of empathy, listening and body language. This is a small group Active Listening game for adults. Or, have you noticed someone in the corner of the room who has been dying to contribute to the meeting? They are responsible for passing the information on to the rest of their team. zDevelop the action. How did you cope with the distraction? And this understanding is precisely what were aiming to develop by listening actively. It works with any sized team and requires only a facilitator and some novel objects that can be passed between participants. Psychological safety, trust, and learning in organizations: A group-level lens. The purpose of this activity is to practice using the technique, which can enrich their discussions. What are your thoughts regarding [. When we give attention to our relationships as well as the task(s) at hand, we create trust and collaborate more effectively. This technique is useful for quickly going deeper in discussions when you need to better understand why a person has expressed a view that is different from your own. Benefits: We dont need to look too far to find sources of workplace stress that might be impacting our colleagues. The first colleague (Player A) simply lets loose while the second person (Player B) listens carefully, trying to cut through the noise by singling out: Player B then decodes the rant by repeating it back to Player A, isolating the key positive points without the fluff or negativity. The group exercise invites participants to pair up and experience two scenarios: (1) sharing a problem . Its best if this isnt inappropriate for the workplace, but at the same time, it doesnt have to be work-related. Players stand in a circle and pass two of the objects along to each other. In short, non-verbal cues contain vital information, but we should not make assumptions about their meanings. Active Listening as Advocacy online course. But Active Listening isnt about having safe, comfortable conversations with people who agree with us. Invite students to role play the scenarios. Find more information on the exercise here. This is the skill of repeating what . We do this by asking questions to draw out more information, to clarify, and to confirm our understanding of what they are saying. For example: Emotion - Offense. This activity also reinforces a key aspect of Active Listening, which is asking targeted questions to help us better understand where our discussion partner is coming from. What is the strangest dream you have ever had? Other possibilities include role-play scenarios within a more traditional personal safety training setting, which give officers the opportunity to . Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What are some things you want to accomplish before you die? What activity causes you to feel like you are living life to the fullest? Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Encourage people to reflect back what they are hearing and to focus on listening skills. What was memorable about it? Our intended messages arent always interpreted as we mean them to be. Active listening involves engaging with our co-workers and bringing empathy to the table to enhance the quality of our dialogue. 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