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Practicing active listening and dialoguing

Dear collaborative discussion friends,

This week we are highlighting an activity that helps participants learn to use specific components of listening, such as active listening and dialoguing. This activity encourages participants to reflect on the acts of speaking and listening. It explores the impact active listening has on the conversation.

This activity is contributed by Jessica Friedrichs, Assistant Professor & Director of Undergraduate Social Work Field Education at Carlow University and Co-founder of the Cultural Humility & Equity Collaborative. It is one of the many activities in the Culturally Responsive Collaboration Module.

If you missed the previous activity plan newsletter, Asking Questions to Promote Curiosity, you can access it and our other weekly newsletters by subscribing below.

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This week’s activity:

Activity 4.2 – Listening to Understand

How to actively listen to and engage in a dialogue with others

This activity helps participants by laying out the specific components of listening. They are then able to practice the process of listening by actively listening to others and engaging in a dialogue with them to deepen their understanding. Through reflection, it also helps participants gain insight into how they listen and how they speak.

Prepare for the Activity

This activity is intended to be done in person. It can also, however, be modified for an online space.

If doing this activity in person, make sure you have enough space to arrange the chairs in the room in concentric circles or short rows of chairs facing each other for the later portions of this activity.

If doing this online, create enough breakout rooms so you can assign participants in pairs to each room for the later portions of this activity. For each step, tell participants how much time they will have. Explain that one person will stay in each breakout room and that you will keep changing their partner for each step as required.

Reflect Individually in Writing

Begin the activity by inviting participants to quietly reflect on the following prompts and write down their responses:

• Do you consider yourself a good listener?
• Are you more comfortable listening or talking?
• How do you know if someone is really listening to you?

Reflect as a Full Group on Listening Concepts

Introduce the following concepts of listening, by writing them on a white board, shared screen or other surface visible to everyone:

• Silence is golden
• Try not to relate the experience you are hearing to yourself
• Be conscious of body language
• Hear what is not said
• Balance
  • Open-ended questions elicit more information
  • Closed-ended questions allow you to control the conversation
  • Don’t ask excessive questions
• Checking understanding: recapping or paraphrasing what you heard to validate and clarify

Then, have participants share their questions, reactions and thoughts to these concepts on another shared surface or screen.

Tip: Having this list visible to everyone will help participants later in the activity when they need to refer back to these concepts. If doing this activity online, sharing a document with these concepts listed that participants can access while in their breakout rooms will be useful.

Break into Pairs

If doing this in person, arrange the chairs in concentric circles or short rows. Explain that for the first round, the inner circle or first row will be “listeners” and the outer circle or second row, “speakers”. Also, if you arrange the chairs in short rows, explain to participants that when it comes time for them to change partners, if they are on the end of a row, they will need to loop around to the beginning of that row.

If doing this online, assign half the participants the letter A and the other half the letter B by adding the letter next to the name displayed for each participant. Explain that for the first round, those assigned the letter A will be “listeners” and those assigned the letter B, “speakers”.

Make sure everyone has a partner. If there is an uneven number of participants, you could be a partner for one of the participants.

Round 1: Practice Active Listening

Explain to participants that if they are the listener, their task is to practice the following elements of active listening:

• Silence is golden
• Try not to relate the experience you are hearing to yourself
• Be conscious of body language
• Hear what is not said

Remind them that as listeners, they are not supposed to speak during this round and do not need to think about what to say in response to this speaker. They only need to focus on listening.

Then, explain to the participants that if they are the speaker, their challenge is to continue to keep talking for two minutes about the following topic:

• Share a life transition you have experienced

If doing this online, at this point, move participants into the breakout rooms, so each room as a listener (A) and speaker (B).

Stop participants immediately once two minutes have passed. Encourage participants to thank their partner.

Round 2: Switch Roles and Practice Active Listening

At this point, have participants change partners. If doing this in person, have the outer circle remain seated, while the inner circle moves one seat to the right. If doing this online, bring participants back as a full group to share the instructions below and then assign those with the letter A in each pair to a new breakout room.

Have participants switch roles so that if they were a “speaker” last time, this time they will be the “listener” and vice versa (so the inner circle or those with an A will be the speakers and the outer circle or those with a B, the listeners).

Have the speaker talk about the same topic as the previous round for two minutes:

• Share a life transition you have experienced

Stop participants immediately once two minutes have passed. Encourage participants to thank their partner.

Round 3: Practice Active Listening & Dialoguing

Once again, have participants change partners by the inner circle moving their seat or, if doing this online, explain the instructions below to the full group and then assign those with the letter A to a new breakout room.

This time, invite the listener (still the outer circle or those with a B) to practice the following elements of dialoguing, while also continuing to practice the elements of active listening:

• Balance
  • Open-ended questions elicit more information
  • Closed-ended questions allow you to control the conversation
  • Don’t ask excessive questions
• Checking understanding: recapping or paraphrasing what you heard to validate and clarify

While their partner speaks, explain that they can ask two or three thoughtful questions. Instruct them to only ask questions (for example, “Was there a person important to you in your life then?”) and not make statements (for example, “I totally agree!”).

Now, invite the speaker (inner circle/letter A) to talk about the following topic for three minutes:

• What is your most significant gift?

Round 4: Switch Roles and Practice Active Listening & Dialoguing

This time, have participants stay with the same partner, while switching roles again (inner circle/letter A = listeners, outer circle/letter B = speakers). The speaker will speak about the same topic, while the listener practices active listening and asks questions.

Debrief as a Full Group

Come back together as a full group and discuss the following process and content questions.

Process Questions:

• What did you learn about how you listen? About how you speak?
• What emotion did you pick up on from the person you spoke with in each round? Was it different depending on the round/prompt and if so, why might that be?
• What did you learn about power dynamics in Round 1?
• As the questioner, was it hard to listen while also thinking of questions to ask? What about thinking about what you were going to say when it was your turn for a prompt?

Content Questions:

• Was the second prompt harder? Is it harder to talk about our gifts than our challenges?
• Did your questioner ask good questions? If so, give us an example.
• What are some insights you might share?

In addition to these debriefing questions, the full description of Activity 4.2 Listening to Understand includes reflection questions, a practice journal prompt, and additional resources to help participants dive deeper.

Dive Deeper by Practicing these Listening Skills with Challenging Topics

This activity is very effective when used to discuss difficult topics. Once participants understand the concepts of listening from doing this activity once, have them repeat the activity in a following session. This time, have participants speak about prompts or questions related to a particularly challenging topic. If you did Activity 5.1 Identifying Your Civic Passion in a previous session, you could use the topic they arrived at during that activity.

If you try out this activity, please share with us what you think:

Rate Activity 4.2

We hope this toolkit activity helps participants learn and practice using active listening and dialoguing skills regularly in their day-to-day interactions, especially during challenging conversations around difficult topics.

Upcoming Events

• The Interactivity Foundation is organizing a 3-part interactive, small group conversation series, exploring dimensions of The Economy & Democracy. Join us for the third session this Wednesday, May 17 at 2pm (EDT). Invite your students! Register here.
• The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley is offering the Bridging Differences in Higher Education Learning Fellowship. This is a great opportunity for any leader in higher education — faculty, administrators, staff, or students — who wants to foster more constructive dialogue and understanding on US college campuses. Recipients will be be part of a 8-month facilitated virtual learning community from September 2023 to April 2024. The application deadline is next Monday, May 22, 2023. Learn more and apply today!
• The School of Public Affairs at American University is hosting an online conversation about dialogue and pedagogy, “Can We Talk? Defining, Practicing, and Protecting Dialogue in Higher Education” on June 13th and 14th from 1pm – 5pm (EDT). Over the two days, this event will have four 90-minute sessions, each beginning with a short keynote followed by an interactive facilitated discussion. All are welcome! Register here.
• We are also accepting nominations for our Pilot Coach Training for Undergraduate Students which will take place this fall. Space will be limited. You can learn more or nominate a student by emailing Shannon at [email protected]

Looking forward to collaborating,

Ritu Thomas & the Collaborative Discussion Team