{"id":2744,"date":"2020-06-03T08:37:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T23:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/?p=2744"},"modified":"2020-06-03T08:37:18","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T23:07:18","slug":"active-listening-a-skill-to-improve-your-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/2020\/06\/03\/active-listening-a-skill-to-improve-your-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"Active Listening: a skill to improve your relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/flo.flinders.edu.au\/course\/view.php?id=63157#section-2\">Wellbeing and Productivity Hacks<\/a> session on <a href=\"https:\/\/flo.flinders.edu.au\/course\/view.php?id=63157\">Oasis Online<\/a> was on Active Listening. You can access the recording and slides via the links provided.<\/p>\n<p>Active listening is a skill one can learn to enhance relationships.<\/p>\n<p>As the name suggests, it involves techniques to improve one&#8217;s capacity to connect with others, via a focus on hearing them better.<\/p>\n<p>In the presentation I outlined what I consider to be the basic techniques.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ggia.berkeley.edu\/practice\/active_listening\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2745 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2020\/06\/activelistening.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1278\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2020\/06\/activelistening.jpg 1278w, https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2020\/06\/activelistening-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2020\/06\/activelistening-768x433.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2020\/06\/activelistening-1024x577.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1278px) 100vw, 1278px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Curiously, an email showed up in my inbox this morning from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gottman.com\/\">Gottman Institute<\/a>, one of the leading organisations exploring relationship health.<\/p>\n<p>They linked to an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gottman.com\/blog\/the-digital-age-the-first-duty-of-love-is-to-listen\/\">article written years back<\/a> on the topic of Active Listening.<\/p>\n<p>The article provides a series of tips to further enhance the Active Listening process &#8211; ones that capture the stance\/attitude of active listening better than just the techniques themselves.<\/p>\n<p>These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>focus on being interested, not interesting &#8211; it isn&#8217;t about you<\/li>\n<li>focus on asking questions about people&#8217;s goals and visions for the future &#8211; this links to a <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/2018\/04\/23\/helpful-way-think-relationships\/\">previous article<\/a> I wrote about how mutual support of achieving goals may be a foundation for good relationships<\/li>\n<li>look for commonalities &#8211; say enough but not too much to communicate to the person you are on common ground<\/li>\n<li>tune in with all your attention &#8211; put that mindfulness training you&#8217;ve been doing to good use<\/li>\n<li>let go of your agenda &#8211; try entering the conversation with the view of simply understanding, not fixing or rescuing or telling your own story<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is worth a read if you want to develop this skill for yourself.<\/p>\n<p>I also like this video from the School of Life \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Being A Good Listener\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-BdbiZcNBXg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Yesterday&#8217;s Wellbeing and Productivity Hacks session on Oasis Online was on Active Listening. You can access the recording and slides via the links provided. Active [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":492,"featured_media":2747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2502,10657,10432],"tags":[10658],"class_list":["post-2744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-skills","category-relationship-tools","category-social","tag-active-listening"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}