Team Leadership Toolkit

Team Leadership Toolkit

Leadership Skills

Setting the Team Direction

Coaching

Click here to access the Lindsay Sherwin Homepage and further toolkits.

On Listening

An active listener:

Pays full attention to the other person without criticism or judgement.
For example by leaving out own opinions and expressions both verbal and facial.
Shows empathy through facial expressions of interest.
For example by smiling, , nodding, eye contact, responding spontaneously
Thus understanding, acceptance, delight, expectation
Shows a posture of involvement
For example, by appearing open, leaning slightly forward, no formal barriers (desk, table).
Asks appropriate and timely Questions.
Questions are a way of eliciting more information from a client, and exploring the process further. Basically, they fall into two distinct camps: - OPEN and CLOSED. (see section on Asking Questions)
Summarises
Another useful skill to include in an interview or counselling session is summarising, not simply at the end to check on agreements and action, but at appropriate points within the session. Summarising again helps both listener and client to check understanding and to reinforce that active listening has taken place. e.g.
- "Let me check what I think you’ve said so far ....."
- "If I’ve heard you correctly, what you’ve said so far is"
- "So to sum up, what we’ve agreed is ....."
Reflects
An often under-used technique and yet such a useful one. Much like the allusion to a mirror reflecting means picking up the essence of what the client has said and putting it back to him or her in a short phrase or sentence of your own, this checks that you understand one another and that you the listener, are accurately hearing what the client has said. For example:-

Client: ‘The last few months have been awful. I was so disappointed after my Annual Appraisal when I hadn’t been put up for promotion, and then my daughter had a distressing time with her fiancée which affected the whole family and then to top it all my mother-in-law was rushed into hospital for major surgery and we’ve still not decided whose going to look after her when she comes out.’
Manager: ‘It sounds like you’ve had a distressing time both at work and home?’

Reflecting is a very simple yet powerful techniques which puts back to the client something and both the words and the feelings behind what has been said, and like garlic, a few words or a phrase of reflection can go a long way!

Phrases such as:- ‘it seems that .....‘it sounds like ‘so you feel that ....?‘ ‘so you think that ....?‘ can help to preface a reflective comment.

And you can’t go wrong by reflecting, for your client will either respond with something like a ‘yes, that’s right .....‘ and go on, or will say something like, ‘well no, actually what I meant was .....‘ and will right it for you, so either way you both win.
Checks Understanding
This is another important and useful technique to bring in intermittently to the listening process, particularly in the early stages and where there is a lot of information coming from the client.
Do not be afraid to intervene even though you may feel that you will be breaking the client’s flow. For as long as you are wondering what the earlier point was and are wanting to check on what has been said, your attention will not be with the client. Also, the intervention will probably feel much more awkward to you the listener, than it will appear to the client.

Phrases such as:- ‘so what you are saying is .....?‘ can help here to fully convey that you have been listening to the client and have accurately heard what they have said, it is worth reflecting and checking understanding two or three times before asking a question, which by its very nature focuses the interview or counselling session in a particular direction.
Encourages
For example, by using facial expressions and verbal triggers, e.g. "that sounds interesting, can you say some more about that?"
Uses silences well
For example, by not filling the space and so allows the client to do so.