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Listening Exercises

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Good morning,

I'm running an event in November for a large group. I want to run some group exercises around listening and wondered if anyone has any that they would be happy to share? The audience predominately work with clients on the telephone.

Many thanks,
Evan
Evan Perkins

8 Responses

  1. Some previous posts on listening
    You may find something useful in the following posts although I don’t think phone listening was mentioned.

    https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=125189

    https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=135235

    It might be worthing searching for other listening posts on TrainingZone.

    I have a couple of listening exercises which could probably be adapted so that the listener can’t see the person speaking.

    Email: ewn1@cant.ac.uk

  2. Listening Games
    Hi Evan

    I know that this subject have appeared here several times before and some good ideas were given.

    I too have a few games that I can email to you if you are interested?

    email – neil@train2develop.com

    All the best

    Neil

  3. WAIT
    Hi Evan
    Just one short exercise I use in my coaching practice which keeps ME from talking too much: Get your people to write down – W A I T

    W hy
    A m
    I
    T alking

    Best wishes
    Barbara StClaire

  4. Listening Technique
    Hello

    Here is a technique I picked up from another training forum and successfully used on a couple of occasions.
    (Apologises to the original contributor – but I cannot remember your name!)

    (I believe it is taught as part of yoga)

    When you are ready to speak you have your tongue against the back of your upper teeth. (It is like this most of the time.)
    When you are prepared to listen you have your tongue behind your lower teeth. It should be relaxed in the lower part of the mouth. Usually when you are supposed to be listening to someone, you have your tongue behind your upper teeth. This means you are always ready to butt in as quickly as possible. If this is the case you aren’t listening as well as you could be.
    The trick is to practice listening with your tongue in the correct position. It really does work!

    Lucy

  5. Ask Questions
    I learned a technique for listening in a coaching class. When you are listening to someone, respond only with questions. This helps to keep you from thinking about your own experiences and responses and forces you to focus on the other person and what he is talking and thinking about.

  6. An exercise in threes
    Hi Evan

    An exercise that works well with those who have both face to face as well as phone listening.

    Split the group into trios, one speaker, one listener and one observer – they do the exercise 3 times, switching roles each time. The speaker is asked to speak on any topic s/he chooses for 3 minutes, with no interuptions whatsoever. The listener is therefore forced to concentrate only upon what is being said. The same speaker then is asked to speak for a further 3 minutes on a different topic, but this time the listener may ask questions as they like. The observer notes the differences in real communication between the other two. For the first 3 minutes the observer should be especially looking for non-verbal signals from the listener that s/he really is listening. In the second 3 minutes there should still be non-verbal listening indications, but more importantly how well did the listener’s questions indicate his/her listening.

    After all 3 have played all three roles, get a sample (at least) of observers’ feedback.

  7. Listening Exercises
    Hi,
    If you have not been able to sort this yet, do please feel free to call me on 07702433284 and I should be able to help as it seems an easy fix.
    Kind regards
    Wayne