Listening Blocks to Understanding

Blocks to Understanding / Characteristics
‘I’ Listening: / There are three specific categories of ‘I’ listening: personal referencing, personal curiosity, and personal certainty.
Personal Referencing-
(“me too” or “ I would never”) / This listening block occurs when our minds shift from listening to understand another, to considering what is being said with reference to our own experiences and then judging its worth.
Personal Curiosity-
(“Where did you get that information?”) / This listening block occurs when we are interested in what others are saying, not to understand their needs, but because we want more information for ourselves.
Personal Certainty
(“Have you tried…?” or “Have you thought about…?) / This listening block occurs when we are sure we know the solution to the problem, sometimes before we have listened enough to be sure that we understand the problem.

Mentoring Matters: A Practical Guide to Learning-Focused Relationships, Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman with CarletteHumbard (2003)


Creating Learning Conversations

Listening Strategies / Characteristics
Developing inner silence / We can improve our ability to listen by training ourselves to silence thoughts we have that lead us to judge rather than simply experience the comments of others.
Listening for what contradicts our assumptions / We can improve our listening if we direct our brain to listen for messages that contradict our assumptions.
Clarifying / We can improve our ability to listen by asking our colleague to slow the pace of conversation or to repeat an idea that we missed the first time it was spoken.
Communicating our understanding / We can improve our ability to listen if we ask questions, clarify, and communicate that we understand what is being said.
Practicing every day / We can improve our ability to listen the more we practice.
Practicing with terrible listeners / We can improve our ability to listen by talking, as well as listening, to people who never seem to take in anything we say and who repeat themselves in every conversation.
Listening Strategies for Non-verbal Communications
  • Facing people when you speak with them.
  • Making eye contact.
  • Avoid distracting gestures.
  • Nodding your head in an encouraging way.
  • Finding an appropriate location for communication.
  • Paying attention to how close we sit with others.
  • Choosing an appropriate tone of voice for the message we want to communicate.
  • Touching or not touching others appropriately depending on the situation.

Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction, Jim Knight (2007)