Reflective listening

Deeply listening to another person is perhaps one of the greatest gifts one person can give another. The purpose of this exercise is to support you in accelerating your skills development in reflective listening.

Reflective Listening: You reflect back the same content of what the person has shared with you but using your own words. It can be a bit like translating what they have said into your own words, ensuring that the meaning stays the same. This shows your listener that you must have understood what they said (but not necessarily the motivational meaning behind it).

This is not about agreeing or disagreeing with what they are saying. It is an acknowledgment of their experience of their world without judging it.
This is about them (not you, nor your ideas, nor your responses).
You take on the goal of making them experiencing you having understood them.

When you respond to the other person, it is useful to pretext it with reflective statements like the ones below. This demonstrates to the other person that you are sharing what you think you heard and therefore are also open to being corrected.

I sense your underlying concern is…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I sense that…
What I hear you saying is…
It seems that you feel that…
I sense you mean…

Exercise 1: I will read out a list of statements, with a pause of 2 seconds before I share my thinking of how I would go about finding a possible reflective listening response. If you wish to give that example a go, then press the pause button and work out what your response would be. When you are ready, click play and hear my reasoning and final sentence. There are 6 examples in this clip.