In-class Exercise Active Listening The goal of this exercise is to practice listening skills while you help someone else think through a personal problem or conflict. Active listening is useful in receiving feedback and in many other situations (e.g., when a subordinate comes to you with problems, when you need to make sense of a situation before trying to change it, etc.) Work in half-teams (groups of 3 or 4) and assign the following roles: 1 talker, 1 listener, 1 or 2 observers. Speaking/Listening (5-8 minutes): The speaker should spend about 5 minutes talking to the listener about some real problem or issue he or she is trying to work out (e.g., job/career choices, work/family issues, etc.). The listener’s role is to help the speaker by being a sympathetic and active listener. In particular, the listener should help the speaker clarify thoughts and feelings by reflecting them back to the speaker (e.g., “So you feel ambivalent about the choice between consulting and industry....”) and by asking probing questions to get the speaker to clarify his/her thinking (e.g., “Are you concerned about the travel requirements of consulting because you worry that it will interfere with your personal life?”). Reflective statements may paraphrase or summarize what the speaker has said, or may attempt to verbalize feelings the speaker has revealed but not explicitly stated. Probing questions can push the speaker to explore deeper feelings. The listener should not attempt to take a point of view or to give advice. During this conversation, the observers observe the listener, taking notes on the “Observer Checklist for Active Listening.” Feedback (5 minutes): After 5 minutes, the speaker should stop and the group should shift to giving feedback to the listener for 5 minutes. The feedback should proceed as follows: Speaker to listener: How did you feel about the listener? Was the listener encouraging? Did he/she seem interested? Did he/she help you clarify your thoughts on the problem you addressed? Observer to listener: Respond to issues on checklist. Listener’s response to group: Did you suppress your reactions and try to listen from the speaker’s point of view? Did you limit yourself to reflective and probing responses? Was this difficult? The listener should practice active listening while he or she is receiving feedback. In particular, the listener should try to understand the feedback initially, eliciting clarification as necessary, and hold any responses to it (especially arguments with it) until his/her turn to respond. After going through this entire process once, reassign all roles for another iteration. If you have time, each member of your team should have a chance to play each role. Leave time at the end of the exercise to discuss as a group what you learned or found most interesting. Be prepared to present this to the class as a whole at the designated time.