Short Description

The goal is to increase participants’ abilities to attend to other people. On the one hand, it shall increase participants’ attentiveness, i.e., their capacity to direct their attention to the needs, feelings, and cognitions of others and to remain attentive even when they feel distressed personally. On the other hand, the training will equip participants with skills to listen and focus on people in a non-judgmental manner that allows others to reflect openly.

Learning Objectives

This course is aiming at assisting practitioners improving their active listening skills and implementing them in their daily practice. More specifically, practitioners will learn to:

• Direct their attention to the needs, feelings and thoughts of their clients and to respond to them appropriately;
• Probe the client if things are not clear during a conversation and react to nonverbal signals;
• Focus on the client in a non-judgmental manner, allowing the client to reflect openly;
• Show their clients they are focused and engaged so that clients feel comfortable to share information;
• Learn to decode the client’s non-verbal signals and body language while expressing himself/herself, like the posture, the tone, speed and pitch of voice, his/her gestures and facial expressions;
• Summarize regularly during session, check whether they have understood the other person;
• Show an interest in the other person during session and encourage him/her to carry on talking through eye contact and manner;
• Give others space and use silence at the right time;
• Show respect to clients;
• Focus on what the speaker is telling.