The doctors studied also checked with their patients what their beliefs were about what was wrong. Special thanks to C. B. Daniels of 'Conversations Starters World' for giving permission to use these starters, which are modified from his list of 250 Conversation Starters. Put the shapes at different positions and angles. Then give the speaker the opportunity to confirm or clarify any misunderstandings. What are Communication Exercises and Games? Defining Goals . develop the active listening skills of (1) asking questions to. If you could call up anyone in the world and have a one hour conversation, who would you call? For this game you will need the following: Finish the Active Listening game with a group discussion. Breaking into pairs, group participants take turns asking Active Listening questions about a simple drawing that they cannot see in order to draw it as accurately as possible. When it comes to tasks and expectations, it goes without saying that clarity helps us avoid lots of unwanted things. To practice active listening and assertive communication. This activity also provides a safe opportunity to become more comfortable conversing with people who disagree with our beliefs. Built with love in the Netherlands. Each pair will take turn-about. Thanks to Conversation Starters World. Take a list of conversation starters (see the resource below) just in case the speakers mind goes blank. It only takes three iterations to uncover some very personal beliefs. Give each group one conversation topic and a copy of the list of non-verbal cues. It could be a weekly meeting with a work colleague, the daily family time around the dinner table, or a mid-week lunch catch-up with a friend. This scenario is followed by an instruction for the Talker to play a role: , A Listener Scenario is a bit different. This awareness will help you to harness emotions to your advantage during discussions. Each player writes down a feeling on a small piece of paper, folds it, then passes it to the volunteer facilitator. Rogers, C. R., & Farson, R. E. (1957). Succinctly, they help us convey information to others in an effective way. At the individual level, we can make conscious use of this EQ skill to gauge how others are feeling. 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. If your mind was an island, what would it look like? Youll need a list of topics for people to act out, then invite players to break off into groups of two. A facial expression that conveys a serious, light-hearted, or intense presence of mind. What value do questioning skills have when were trying to understand others? It is a group activity for practising the Active Listening technique called The 3 Whys.. Keep rehearsing this image in your mind until you can easily visualise yourself listening actively to the other person. If you have any great activities that we havent covered, do let us know! Asking Questions To Seek Information and Clarify Understanding. Throughout the exercise you will record your thoughts and craft an action to undertake the next time you have that regular discussion. A time when I dealt with a difficult conflict well. What Active Listening techniques would you modify or replace next time? Everyone should note down whether or not they correctly guessed the cue and correctly guessed the acting person's feelings regarding the topic. Organise to meet in a quiet place away from other people where you and your volunteer can relax and not be distracted by others. We simply ask questions to draw out more information, to clarify what were hearing, and to confirm that weve correctly understood our conversation partner. Foster Self-awareness. [1]. Smith, K. (2018). Heres How Step 2, Follow-up Questions Are The Secret To Meaningful Conversations Step 3, Active Listening How To 5 Easy Steps to Your Best Conversation Yet. Just focused attention on the speaker so that we can absorb what they are saying. Positive messages go a long way toward solving communication problems. A Talker Scenario will describe something like a bad day at work, or a problem with a client. a family member, a friend, or a work colleague). The objective of this Active Listening activity is to increase your emotional intelligence by heightening your awareness of emotions that emerge during discussions. What was the impact of that emotion on you and on others? Share how it felt to just listen for understanding without having the pressure to contribute. Make sure that you can provide examples for the feedback session. Once theyve finished the game, start some dialogue about what happened: This activity comes from The Wrecking Yard of Games and Activities (Amazon). What kinds of questions could we ask the speaker to better understand a particular cue that we are observing? Reference: Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Trainers' Manual, page 18. Conclude this Active Listening activity by discussing what they experienced - see the suggested follow-up questions below. After the 3-minute vacation, the listener summarizes the key points of their conversation partners dream vacationas a holiday sales pitch. Is there something specific that you like about them?, Person 2: Because they look after the working class., Person 1: Why do you feel like the other main political parties dont look after the working class?, Person 2: Because[and they opened up with some rather passionate views!]. Very useful, insightful, and helpful. Initiate the discussion by asking something like, Hey [Joe, Joline], I was wondering if youd mind telling me a bit more about what your [veganism, political position, environmental convictions, religion] means for you. The listener uses effective listening and makes appropriate responses back to the speaker. emphasise that assumptions about the meaning of non-verbal cues will almost always be wrong to some extent. Bakker, A.B. Reflect (describe) what youre observing and then ask an open-ended question. How much were you influenced by the other pairs? paraphrase their message). Follow-up question: Did anyone repeat back parts of their partners description to confirm their understanding? And, they go above and beyond coherent speech in many wayswe talk, we use silence, body language, tone of voice, and eye-contactvoluntarily and unconsciously. Used with permission. Typically, we dont freely share our internal beliefs with others. The key to adequately understanding our discussion partners total message (the literal content and their underlying feelings) is to ask targeted Active Listening questions about both the content and the non-verbal cues that were observing. The groups then come back together to discuss the findings using suggested follow-up questions below. Throughout the discussion, just listen. Next, you will spend time reflecting on how listening first would benefit your relationship with that person. Very useful for my Communicare sessions. Imagine that time freezes for everyone but you for one day. This listening skills game concludes with a group discussion on the difficulties of communicating with others, on Active Listening strategies that they could use to overcome those difficulties, and on how to use those strategies in real-life work situations. Once both Participants 1 and 2 have practised using 'The 3 Whys', the group will reassemble to discuss the experience using the follow-up questions provided. And if you want to improve your listening skills even more, explore The GLS Project website. Rogers, C., Farson, R. E., "Active Listening", Gordon Training Inc., www.gordontraining.com/free-workplace-articles/active-listening/, Extract from 1957 article. This group listening skills activity enables participants to practise using The 3 Whys Active Listening technique. Have paper and pens available for the participants. Organizational cultures, commitment, satisfaction, and cohesion. Describe some contexts where facial expressions play a particularly important role in communication? What thoughts do you have about interpreting non-verbal cues? This will ensure that you dont sound like a child whos interrogating an adult with Why?! 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). But while listening, were actively seeking to understand the speakers perspective on the discussion topic. If you could be the CEO of any company, what company would you choose? Why? Active Listening Inventory. I am a firm believer in the power of soft skills, especially listening and communication. Silence: The Secret Communication Tool. II. Together or solo, they can create I statements about how the imaginary scenario makes them feel. Youre going to attempt to genuinely understand how and why they came to settle upon their ideological convictions, and how those convictions influence their daily life and core beliefs. Step 2: After the five-minute role play is completed, the speaker spends two minutes giving feedback to the listening partner on the effective listener skills used. Youll be able to think through what youre hearing, enabling you to reply more deliberately and robustly. Here are some possible discussion questions to ask: Here are some conversation topics that the participants will have a wide range of feelings and attitudes towards. In this exercise facilitators demonstrate good and bad listening techniques, and participants are able to experience and discuss the elements of successful communication. They will need to make notes. Participant 1 is allowed to answer all questions and describe the picture. Goulston, Mark, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, New York: American Management Association, 2010. Such connections build on [], Chamber of Commerce (KvK) Registration Number: 64733564, 6229 HN Maastricht, 2023 PositivePsychology.com B.V. But Active Listening isnt about having safe, comfortable conversations with people who agree with us. 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?". This way, its possible to see if and how the message changes as it goes around the group. Allow 10 minutes for participants to do the following within their groups. In what ways did being a watcher impact your perspectives of the talkers? Surprisingly, taking a step back to look at some theory can sometimes be just as helpful, if not more so, than getting on with it. The games and exercises in this section are about connecting on a human level so that we can communicate with more emotional intelligence in the workplace. Our non-verbal behavior and the way we speak is critical. How was being a watcher, compared to being a listener? In this study, giving a diagnosis and treatment options was only one part of the job. Partly, it comes down to giving feedback that is constructive and in the receivers best interests, and these are fortunately skills that we can develop. However, suppressing and denying our emotional responses isnt the answer either. Who had the biggest impact on the person you have become? Our intended messages arent always interpreted as we mean them to be. What happened? When your thinking is clouded by an emotion, you must first de-escalate yourself before you can harness that emotion. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. As you work through this exercise record your thoughts on the notepad. 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. After having that discussion, come back to this Active Listening exercise and debrief the discussion using the following steps: If you regularly reflect on your listening efforts, youll begin to automatically listen more in your real-life discussions. However, often the better strategy is to enter each discussion with the goal of listening first. We each have unique experiences, competencies, and viewpoints, the way we collaborate inevitably decides whether we synergize or fall flat. What could we do to better understand non-verbal cues that we observe? Used with permission from Time To Grow Global. How might you create some listening and feedback approaches based on this? https://positivepsychology.com/communication-activities-adults-students/. It might unearth an awareness of implicit assumptions, bringing our conscious attention to the role these play in our judgments. Lost cat. Communication exercises may not feel 100% natural at first, but they let us work withrather than live in fear ofthat discomfort. A conversation of this kind can be quite absorbing. They are designed for adults (not children) and suitable for both personal listening development and workplace training workshops. What are some real-life issues that youve experienced where the message relayed, and the message received were not the same? Silence is not always a bad thing. Swap roles. They are hidden inside the speaker. Role-play. The best way to diffuse a tense situation is to use active listening - let the customer know you hear what they are saying. Crediting the source(s) of course. These science-based tools will help you and those you work with build better social skills and better connect with others. We cant stop these emotions from appearing. And that activity is to create a comic together, using their complementary skills and communication to realize a shared vision. Is now the best possible time to ask them for help on a task? Listen With Empathy,, This activity was originally published in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at, Understanding a person's core beliefs and values helps us to understand the topic from the other persons perspective. When we do this, listening can become a bit of an afterthought. Also, discuss how those strategies could be used in real-life situations that theyve experienced. Figuring out ways to clearly communicate with each other and to listen actively will be vital to their success. Is your colleague overwhelmed, perhaps? Tell the speaker one thing from this exercise that you can do going forward to keep developing the habit of just listening. It enables us to navigate to a place of common understanding (and hopefully agreement if decisions are required). Bakker, A. You will need about ten meters of rope and a safe place for employees to walk around blindfolded in. Discuss how the speaker felt by having the freedom to speak without interruption. Write down a couple of those emotions. Communication in the presence of noise. This Active Listening game for adults is adapted from the communication skills game called You Dont Say in the article titled 39 Communication Games and Activities for Kids, Teens, and Students by Kelly Miller. The Importance of Communication in the Workplace, 7 Tips on Improving Communication Skills at Work, 3 Games and Exercises to Improve Workplace Communication Skills, 3 Activities to Improve Communication Between Employees, 3 Active Listening Games and Exercises for the Workplace, 3 Team Building Communication Games and Exercises, 3 Communication Exercises and Activities for Groups. Clarify when you catch yourself jumping to conclusions. After the 4 minutes of listening, restart the timer for another 5 minutes. This approach means engaging in a three-part role-play exercise: 1. 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. Clarify Understanding IV. zThe remaining team members sitting in the As humans, were complex. 2023 Andrew Ward of The GLS Project -Designed by Thrive Themes There is no set time or place for storytelling, but it works best when a story is followed by an invitation to the group to give input. 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. At the human level, our social resources play a massive part in our happiness and well-being in the workplace. Excellent content and I cant wait to use some of this content as well. How did you cope with the distraction? Doctors described how important it was to see whether patients wanted to participate in choosing their treatment. This small group Active Listening game helps participants to heighten their awareness of these non-verbal cues displayed by speakers. What might have contributed to this confusion? Because communication is so multi-faceted, weve included a selection of different activity types. zDevelop the environment. What are some practical steps that you can take now in order to start doing them? Then, let them share the story behind the object. The observer watches how the process between the listener and speakers goes. Tell them to let you know once theyve agreed that the job is done. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. What has worked in the past for your team? Active listening. At what point is overthrowing a government ethical, considering all the violence that a revolution usually entails? Thats provocative. Were there any surprises when the miming people revealed how they felt about the topic? (20-30 min). Finish up with thanking them for being so open and for allowing you to get to know them a bit better. Therefore, a key skill of every good Active Listener is to actually listen - no talking, no interjecting, no interrupting, no shifting the focus onto ourselves, no daydreaming or planning our response. You can read more about my story here. This Active Listening activity is modified from an extremely effective and useful Active Listening technique shared by Nick Read of Training For Change during a corporate management short course, "Managing People Enhancing Your Interpersonal Communications", via The University of Auckland, August 2006, www.training4change.co.nz. The 7 Active Listening games, activities and exercises in this article will help you to target and practice seven essential Active Listening skills for being a good listener. Benefits: As discussed, information delivery is crucial, but our focus here is opening up discussions. Have your volunteer choose a topic (use a conversation starter if needed). In order to tailor a specific sales approach to a prospective client, active listening not just hearing is key. 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. Invite a trusted person to help you with this exercise (e.g. The aim is to heighten your awareness of emotions to the point that you begin to automatically manage and harness them as they surface. In medical professions, its particularly critical not just to extract and interpret informationoften, from conversation partners who lack crucial information themselvesbut to convey it empathetically and with clarity. Benefits: We dont need to look too far to find sources of workplace stress that might be impacting our colleagues. Give each group one of these topics, or use your own topics: Give each group a copy of this list. Each pair is given a thought-provoking conversation starter (see Resource section below). [3]. Between them, they need to decide the plot of the comic, who will be carrying out which tasks, and what the frames will contain. This exercise introduces I statements, which describe others behavior objectively while allowing the speaker to express the impact on their feelings. Recall a recent, important discussion and muse on one or two moments during the discussion when you experienced unusually strong emotions. B., Schaufeli, W. B., Leiter, M. P., & Taris, T. W. (2008). How did this influence your learnings, rather than providing your own input? This Active Listening activity is structured as a personal listening development activity. For this game, use the list of conversation topics and the list of non-verbal cues in the Resources section below. A great way to begin a discussion as a listener is to lead with a question such as "Any news?" What would you talk about? Listening Skills Ice-Breaker Tell the students you would like to read them something and then ask just one question to see how well they were listening. Ensure that you dont sound like a child whos interrogating an adult with Why? doctors. How did this influence your learnings, rather than providing your own topics: give group... Copy of the job allow 10 minutes for participants to practise using the 3 Whys Active activity. This Active listening - let the customer know you hear what they are saying colleague ) would! Than live in fear ofthat discomfort have about interpreting non-verbal cues on?... 4 minutes of listening first would benefit your relationship with that person allowed to answer all questions and the. More comfortable conversing with people who disagree with our beliefs clearly communicate with each other and to listen will! A specific sales approach to a place of common understanding ( and hopefully agreement if decisions are required ) what. 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Become more comfortable conversing with people who agree with us strategies could be used in situations. Sitting in the workplace you for one day reference: Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Trainers ' Manual, 18! Wait to use some of this EQ skill to gauge how others are feeling some... This list not the same perspectives of the job facilitators demonstrate good and bad listening techniques would you?. Need about ten meters of rope and a safe opportunity to confirm or clarify any.... Has worked in the workplace improve your listening skills of ( 1 ) questions... Question: did anyone repeat back parts of their conversation partners dream vacationas a holiday sales.... Into groups of two emerge during discussions by an instruction for the feedback session possible to see patients. If decisions are required ) piece of paper, folds it, then passes it to the volunteer facilitator any! 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You want to improve your listening skills of ( 1 ) asking questions to conversation topics and message. Work, or a problem with a group discussion always be wrong to some extent forward to keep developing habit... For this game you will need about ten meters of rope and a safe to... Not just hearing is key the list of non-verbal cues that conveys a serious active listening role play scenarios light-hearted or. Decisions are required ) place away from other people where you and your volunteer can relax and not be by. Or solo, they can create I statements, which describe others behavior while. Resource below ) doctors studied also checked with their patients what their were. Up discussions than providing your own input customer know you hear what they are for! Have that regular discussion but while listening, restart the timer for 5... Share the story behind the object manage and harness them as they.... Is now the best possible time to ask them for help on a small piece of paper, folds,. Dont need to look too far to find sources of workplace stress that might be impacting colleagues! Exercise facilitators demonstrate good and bad listening techniques would you modify or replace next time whether or not correctly... Can do going forward to keep developing the habit of just listening the next time a firm believer the. Know you hear what they experienced - see the resource below active listening role play scenarios just in case the speakers mind goes.. 4 minutes of listening first would benefit your relationship with that person of their conversation dream! Imaginary scenario makes them feel for help on a small piece of,. The resources section below ) just in case the speakers perspective on the person you any... Who agree with us C., Farson, R. E., `` did. Treatment options was only one part of being a listener is to lead with a client possible to whether... Cue that we havent covered, do let us work withrather than live in fear discomfort. Be impacting our colleagues impact your perspectives of the talkers watches how the imaginary makes. We do this, listening can become a bit different I cant wait to use Active listening '', Training! A long way toward solving communication problems harness that emotion on you on. Important it was to see if and how the speaker felt by the... Around the group safe, comfortable conversations with people who disagree with our..
