Participant 1 is allowed to answer all questions and describe the picture. Each person must secretly decide on the cue that best describes their feeling towards their groups topic. How might you create some listening and feedback approaches based on this? Nonverbal communication. Here are the 7 Active Listening games, activities and exercises, paired with the essential listening skills that they are designed to help you target and develop. Split the group into pairs, each pair seated with their backs to each other. Together, the pairs can come up with more productive, empathetic, and appropriate responses, with the acting experience fresh in mind. Briefly reflect on what did and didnt work. What do you do? Benefits: We dont need to look too far to find sources of workplace stress that might be impacting our colleagues. Then the When we do this, listening can become a bit of an afterthought. STUDENT. Humans are better at creation than destruction, Country and Western music is divinely inspired, Social media is a necessary part of daily life, We need to use poison-bait aerial drops for pest control. How did repeating the why question deepen your understanding of your discussion partners perspective? listening and not solving the issue or problem. The participants are divided into groups of 5. Stay focused on getting to know this person better. This awareness will help you to harness emotions to your advantage during discussions. Facilitators add others active listening components not covered by group. A time when I dealt with a difficult conflict well. A simple A4 picture for every participant, which they will describe to their game partner. However, often the better strategy is to enter each discussion with the goal of listening first. With a little bit of respectful digging using the Active Listening technique called The 3 Whys, we can quickly uncover their internal/hidden core beliefs and values regarding that topic in order to better understand their external/public response. Repeat these steps after significant conversations, but not in an unhealthy, protracted way though. Storytelling is an engaging way to convey information; when its positive information, narratives are also highly effective means of motivating and inspiring others (Tomasulo & Pawelski, 2012). How did you cope with the distraction? Key communication skills and how to acquire them. Great simple and applicable source on communication topic. The aim is to heighten your awareness of emotions to the point that you begin to automatically manage and harness them as they surface. This is a small group Active Listening game for adults. To really grasp how big of an impact it has, we can touch on some of the theory. The world will be a better place once weve mastered them. How much does language affect our thinking? CCSG is a structure, and it involves: C: Characters Was your understanding of the description you received the same as your partners understanding of the description they relayed? According to Shannon and Weavers Theory of Communication (1998), this simply creates more noise and negatively impacts our ability to reach resolutions at work (Smith, 2018). Doctors described empathy in terms of feedback and validation. In this exercise facilitators demonstrate good and bad listening techniques, and participants are able to experience and discuss the elements of successful communication. Such connections build on [], Chamber of Commerce (KvK) Registration Number: 64733564, 6229 HN Maastricht, 2023 PositivePsychology.com B.V. You will utilise a well-recognised habit-formation strategy - the process of imagination and reflection.' Was there any lack of clarity around the instructions? Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). Dont interrupt or try to share your beliefs. Discuss how the speaker felt by having the freedom to speak without interruption. We hope you enjoyed reading this article. During the 5 minutes, Participant 2 must draw the picture that Participant 1 is holding. (2012). When talking, people convey vital information through non-verbal behaviour and gestures. Then back in large group, go around circle and share what you appreciated about the way the other person listened to you. Debrief with a chat about the communication that went on. The job demands-resources model: State of the art. Avoid filler words. Popcorn Storytelling. Help put resources in the hands of change makers. What were you really into when you were a kid? create an opportunity to discuss strategies for uncovering how our discussion partners truly feel about the discussion topic. The listener uses effective listening and makes appropriate responses back to the speaker. Checked whether they wanted further information. 5 Active Listening Games and Exercises. Finish up with thanking them for being so open and for allowing you to get to know them a bit better. Think of a specific, regular discussion time that youre involved in. Other possibilities include role-play scenarios within a more traditional personal safety training setting, which give officers the opportunity to . Imagine that time freezes for everyone but you for one day. It helps us to understand how they have formed their perspective on the topic, even though we may disagree with that point of view. This group Active Listening game is designed to practice using Active Listening questions that reduce misunderstandings during discussions. At the human level, our social resources play a massive part in our happiness and well-being in the workplace. Clarify when you catch yourself jumping to conclusions. The participant asking the conversation starter and the 3 Why questions must not shift the focus of the discussion onto themselves. Role play scenarios for supervisors help employees understand more clearly what their role is in the daily work that you expect. Useful discussion points include: Through active listening, we can enhance our understanding of other peoples perspectives (Drollinger et al., 2006). When done in pairs, they can practice giving each other feedback on meaning what you say without triggering defensiveness in the other. Three are my unique Active Listening adaptations of existing communication activities. But because the way we get along is so fundamental to organizational success and human flourishing, many more companies are focusing on the latter. Write the topics on separate pieces of paper. The participants must be able to describe and draw the picture in 5 minutes. NOTE: Please read my Acceptable Use policy on how to copy these Active Listening games, exercises, and activities for your own use. Regularly, people express views and ideas during discussions that are different to ours. This Active Listening activity is designed for training workshops. One person can be the difficult customer and the other the customer service rep, then they can switch roles. Crediting the source(s) of course. What are some things you want to accomplish before you die? What is the strangest dream you have ever had? Use paraphrasing lead-ins such as I think I heard you say and It sounds like. Once both Participants 1 and 2 have attempted to draw a picture, the group will reassemble to discuss the difficulties of communicating with each other and to discuss Active Listening strategies that they could use to overcome those difficulties. During this debrief, they reflect collectively on the experience itself: This gamestorming communications exercise is based on a team coaching technique by Time To Grow Global. Figuring out ways to clearly communicate with each other and to listen actively will be vital to their success. Participant 2 has 5 minutes to ask questions about that picture so that they can draw it as accurately as possible. (20-30 min). Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA, Contact a Commons librarian if you would like to connect with the author. After having that discussion, come back to this Active Listening exercise and debrief the discussion using the following steps: If you regularly reflect on your listening efforts, youll begin to automatically listen more in your real-life discussions. Set a 4 minute timer and begin listening to your volunteer talk about their chosen topic. promote collaboration. Evangelism is a different type of discussion that must be done with openness and integrity, which is especially true if you are asking about their religious beliefs. Participants who sit in the middle are talkers while those in the outer ring are watchers, and these roles should be allocated prior to the exercise. Tell the speaker one thing from this exercise that you can do going forward to keep developing the habit of just listening. How did this influence your learnings, rather than providing your own input? Once everyone has finished writing, the acting person can then disclose their cue to the group and explain in 30 seconds why it reflects how they feel about the groups topic. In communicating expectations, needs, and more, it helps to clarify and create common ground. These interpersonal and team communication games cover topics such as misinterpreting information, awareness of our assumptions and engaging others. If we want to communicate empathetically and build relationships with co-workersimportant social resourcespersonal storytelling is one way we can build our teams while developing communication skills. Share what it felt like to not be able to ask questions when you heard something that needed clarifying or heard something you wanted to know more about. The objective of this Active Listening exercise is to help you develop the mindset of entering into every discussion firstly wearing your listener hat, so as to focus on understanding the other persons perspective. To have a rich and substantial discussion they should hold strongly to this belief. With each asking of the Why? question were inviting the speaker to increasingly open up about their beliefs and values, and to share the reasons for their views. [1]. Say something like, Hey, Im keen on developing good listening skills. Benefits: Our messages need to make sense if we want to convey information in a meaningful way. Make it extra-hard if you like, by instructing them not to look at one anothers creative progress as they draw, either. Lost cat. It is simply amazing. Make multiple copies of the list of non-verbal cues. Once both Participants 1 and 2 have practised using 'The 3 Whys', the group will reassemble to discuss the experience using the follow-up questions provided. Topics to speak on could include: This small group Active Listening game helps participants to heighten their awareness of these non-verbal cues displayed by speakers. It can be adapted for training workshops by splitting participants into pairs. Why not? We live in an information-driven society, where communication determines how fast we learn. While the asker can pose questions, the mime can only act out their answers. emphasise that assumptions about the meaning of non-verbal cues will almost always be wrong to some extent. Active listening activities are ideas that will promote the ability to pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal communication cues. Benefits: In an objective sense, we need to extract information so we can channel our efforts accordingly. Start with groups (or sub-groups) of between four and ten players; in each of these, someone will need to volunteer as a facilitator. Communication in the presence of noise. It doesnt take very long, either, and can be played in as little as ten to twenty minutesperfect for breaking up the day. We spend a lot of time listening Various studies stress the importance of listening as a communication skill. To try out personal storytelling, set aside a team-building afternoon, meeting, or workshop. With a broad and beautiful rainbow of ways to communicate, then, how do we know whats considered a skill? For more information about how to listen actively, see The GLS Project article, Active Listening How To 5 Easy Steps to Your Best Conversation Yet, For more information on cognitive empathy, including how it differs from emotional empathy, see The GLS Project article Want to Avoid Poor Discussions? How effective was this technique? And here, we have only one link rather than an entire chain of people. The mime reads the card, then attempts to act out whats on it (youll first need to decide on a theme, like weather, activities, or what have you). Each group will receive a copy of this list. Special thanks to C. B. Daniels of 'Conversations Starters World' for giving permission to use these starters, which are modified from his list of 250 Conversation Starters. become more comfortable conversing with people who disagree with your beliefs. This can be a fun roleplay to really ham it up (make it exaggerated and humourous). How did communication look with a longer or shorter chain? Take a list of conversation starters (see the resource below) just in case the speakers mind goes blank. This worksheet provides role play exercises to help with practicing active listening advocacy skills. Finish up by discussing this Active Listening exercise with the speaker. (If your download doesn't appear within 10 minutes please, check your Spam folder and Gmail Promotions folder.). Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Communication is a two-way street, at the very least. As you can probably see, the activity is aimed at helping teammates appreciate that feedback has positive goals. Active listening involves giving the other person time to explore their thoughts and feelings, they should be given adequate time for that. It is a group activity for practising the Active Listening technique called The 3 Whys.. Bakker, A.B. It is being attentive and respectful to the person talking. 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