Listening Barrier

Fear to listening too well

Are you afraid to really listen?
Do you fear losing your own train of
thoughts if you listen too well?
You may worry that if you dont jump into
disagree you will be seen to be agreeing.
All these fears are unfounded.
If the counselor loses his train of thought,
it will be temporary.
If the opinion changed, maybe the other
persons ideas are better.
And will always be time later on, after
listening to disagree.
Listening for What One Wants to
Hear
If the counsellor is very poor
listener they hears what he wants
to hear rather than what is being
said.
This has a disastrous effect on
relationships with subordinates.
Personal Limitation, Which Affect
Interpretation
The counselor's basic
assumptions can affect what he
hears.
The assumptions are based on
his personal experiences and
memories, perceptions, value,
biases, attitudes, expectations,
and feelings.
Emotional Reaction
Sometimes people react strongly
to certain words or phrases which
happen to evoke emotional
responses.
This interferes with their ability to
hear what is being said after the
emotive words.
Lack of Self Awareness
The counselors lack of
awareness of his own feelings
and struggles makes it difficult to
listen to other people.
Think Ahead
Words are spoken at a rate of
approximately 150 per minutes, but
the brain can process information
about three time as fast.
When counselling it is inappropriate
for the counsellor to use this spare
thinking time for planning his own
next words or thinking about
something else, as all the way to the
ends of sentences and using spare
time to think about what the other
person is communicating.
Self Consciousness
If you are worried about how he
appear or is nervous about what
he is going to say next, his
listening will be distracted.
Tips to Enhance Listening
1. Patience: The counsellor should the
space and time to be really there for his
subordinate.
2. Concentration: He should focus on what
is happening and try not to be distracted.
3. Reflection: He should check of
understanding frequently by reflecting.
4. Watchfulness: The counsellor should
watch the subordinates body language.
5. Good Listener: He should listen to how
things are said.
6. Attention: He should also be to
listen for what is not said what is
being avoided?
7. Analytical ability: The counsellor
should recognize his responses and
try to put his own feelings aside. He
should be able to analyze whether he
is switching off? Mentally arguing?
Over identifying? Or Stereotyping?
8. Self Analysis: He should be aware
of his own body language(SOLER)
acronym can be use to help him
remember:
Sit Squarely
Open gestures
Lean Slightly Forward
Eye Contact
Relax
Counselors Qualities
Qualities of a Counselor
Analytical To sift, track and control the flow of information
Ability
Judgment To know when to suspend it
Patience To Control once immediate reactions
Warmth To create a safe atmosphere
Alertness To create non-verbal signals and discrepancies
Resilience To tolerate ambiguity and seeming
contradictions
Plainness To say what one means
Trustworthine To refuse to gossip
ss
Restraint To the urge to talk about oneself
Concentration To hear what is implied as well as what is said
openly
Qualities of a Counselor

Experience Of life, to allow an element of compassion for

people
Training To supplement commonsense

Self- To allow the client to be in charge sometimes

confidence
Courage To confront when necessary

Coolness To know when to reassure or sympathize and

when not
Firmness To stop the client focusing responsibility on
outside sources
Prudence To stay clear of organizational conflict

Integrity To refrain from abusing authority

Creativity To shift the focus of solutions

Realism To understand organizational, cultural and

political factors.
Sensitivity To connect with others feelings.
1. Tolerance
1. Counsellors need tolerance and
a measure of self-acceptance if
they are ever going to show it to
others.
Counsellors who like things to be
neat and tidy are in for a hard time.
People and their personal problems
are not generally neat and tidy.
2. Clients and their behavior often
do not fit into the counselor's
own patterns of thoughts or
beliefs or judgments as much as
one might like; and
The perfectionist counsellor will
be easily tempted into
evaluative comments rather
than understanding ones.
3. Such person will find it difficult to
deal with the lack of clarity and
precision in many counselling
situation.
4. The need for perfection usually
means making as few mistakes as
possible better still, none at all
and this inhibits naturalness,
which can be rated more highly
than perfection in a counsellor.
2. Self Knowledge
By self knowledge is not meant being
endlessly self analytical.
That is a separate carrier in itself and
would not be recommended for most
counselors, let alone the average
manager or colleague.
People sometimes imagine that to
embark on counselling they need to
know a lot more about people in
general.
But it is desirable to begin with by
knowing a bit more about yourself.
The best starting point for counselors
is to become involved in counselling,
to learn to use themselves as the
main tool and then to be aware of how
the process is affecting them and how
they can improve.
They need to aware of three facts;
a) Counselling can be taxing
b) Poor Counselling can be dangerous
c) The power of the counselor
Discretion
Blabbermouths(a person who talks
excessively) do not make good
counselors, although oddly enough
blabbermouths tend to receive more
than their share of confidence.
There is the ironic little twist that
some people (half)- knowingly
confine in a blabbermouth (Promise
you wont tell a soul!) because they
(half)- know it will be all over the
place in ten minutes.
Meanwhile, they are virtuously
telling themselves they would
never have revealed it had they
realized.
The good listener, the good
counselor, the good helper, every
bit as much as the blabbermouth,
cannot help finding out more
than they would really like to
know.
Example
Naveen: I am going in to see the
manager tomorrow morning and I
am going to let it all hang out. They
may think I am not pulling my
weight but there are a few things
they dont know. I dont care if I
burst into tears in the process. I
may bleed all over his carpet but
everybodys going to know I have
been in there.
 Naveens counselor colleague was quite
excited by such revelations though not
in any way worried, since he was not
himself involved.
Shekhar (the general manger and two or
three echelons/level higher) was known
to shoot from the hip.
The fallout from an explosive meeting
between him and the notoriously
excitable Naveen could keep the place
buzzing for days.
What does Counsellor Colleague
can do?
Confidentiality is not the issue here.
It is already late evening and balloon
is due to go up first thing in the
morning.
The problem is what to do with
Naveen and broadly, should he be
calmed down or allowed to go
ahead?
This is where counselor colleague
 He can easily persuade himself that it is
time anyway for Naveen and Shekhar to
have their High Noon confrontation.
Simplest is to say nothing, leave Naveen
nicely wound up and hope for a good sear
at the next days performance.
There are even in the counselling profession
itself, those who find it stimulating to send
clients though interesting mine fields.
Why dont you just walk out on him? You know
give him the old heave-ho! Note that pinned to
the kitchen table By the Time I get to Phoenix
He will be Sleeping sort of routine.
 Naveens colleague was wise enough to
mistrust his own motivation and to talk things
through with him.
The net result was that Naveen blew out his
storm the night before, and went in to see
Shekhar in a quiet frame of mind.
As it happen, Shekhar was relatively relaxed
that morning and two had useful and in the
end very productive session.
But Naveens confident could easily have been
less self aware, could have persuaded himself
that a shootout would be good for them both
and left Naveen to get on with a self destruct.
The counsellor needs to keep in
the forefront of his mind the
question such as is this really in
the other persons interest, or am
I indulging myself, serving my
own end?
Interest
One aspect of the counselors
own needs may be curiosity.
In practice, this is more an asset
than a handicap.
Someone who is to help others
needs some curiosity, some
interest in people.
And most counselors,
professional or just those whom
everyone likes talking to, soon
have their general curiosity
satisfied.
There is a sort of paid barrier
which most counselors go
through, when they cry Enough!
I dont want to hear about
anybody elses problem ever
again. I just dont want to know
Linking
Does
counselor need to like people?
Consider example;

An admin manager in his late thirties always wanted to get

in to sales and has now successful launch of a new outlet,
tripling expected first-year sales. the snag? He has just been
fired because the company can no longer afford him. He is
on his way to see you to personnel manager.
In your opinion it is all rather harsh. His appraisal (you have
seen it) is bland, too bland, it reflects neither positive nor
negative in any concrete way. It also seems strange to say
he doesnt have sharp end sales ability, although you can
see that a static, maintenance type of sales manager is all
that is needed now, more like an order taker than a
salesman.
Keep him on ice till the next launch? But that
is two years away and the people involved
say they wouldnt work with him again
anyway, though he himself is convinced they
would. Is it all a mater of personality clash?
That is certainly the case with the mans
own manager. So do you go and se his
manager? Too late, the man is knocking on
the door. What are you gong to say? You can
soon see what puts people off. He has some
quite grotesque gestures and facial
expressions, his voice is grating and he
appears when sitting to be about to take off
like a rocketing pheasant.
But you have been trained in counselling
skils os you know what to do. Right?
 Liking people or perhaps better the ability to
come to like people) is useful for a counselor.
Some warmth and some instinctive sympathy
is a great assets.
Not the constant quest for the down trodden,
the sharp nose for every bird with a broken
wing, but a combinations of interest in and
natural respect for others.
Liking is different from being emotionally
involved with someone.
That inevitably makes counseling more
difficult and usually inadvisable.
The Core Conditions of
Counselling
1. Empathy
2. Positive Regard
3. Genuiness
4. Concreteness
1. Empathy
Empathy as the counselors ability to
enter the clients phenomenal world to
experience the client's world as if it
were your own without ever losing the
as if quality. - Rogers (1961)
A resurgent interest in empathy in
psychotherapy, detailing how it is
perceived in client-centered,
psychoanalytic, behavioral and
cognitive, postmodernist, and eclectic
approach. Greenberg (1997)
 Categories of
Empathy

Empathic Rapport- Experience of the

Clients World

Communicative
Attunement
They describe three categories of
empathy;
1. Empathic Rapport- Primarily
kindness, global understanding and
tolerant acceptance of the clients
feelings and frame of reference.
2. Experience Near-understanding of the
Clients World What it is like to have
the problems the client has, to live in
the life situation the conscious as well
as some unconscious elements of the
clients experience.
3. Communicative Attunement The
therapist tries to put himself or
herself in the clients shoes at the
moment, to grasp what they are
trying to consciously communicate
at the moment, and what they are
experiencing at the moment.
Skills for Empathy
Perceiving:
Perceiving involves an intense
process of actively listening for
themes, issues, personal constructs,
an emotions.
Themes may be thought of as
recurring patterns for example,
views of oneself,
attitudes towards others,
consistent interpersonal relationship
patterns,
fear of failure and search for personal
power.
 George Kelly (1955) described the
perceptual element of empathy as
understanding the clients personal
constructs.
He defined personal constructs as
the unique set of thoughts a person
uses to process information, give
meaning to life events, order ones
world, explain cause and effect
relationships, and make decisions.
 Communicating
In the communication component of empathy,
the counsellor says something that tells the
client that his or her meanings and feelings
have been understood.
If a counselor listens carefully and
understands well but says nothing, the client
has no way of knowing what is in the
counselors mind.
Primary empathy is often communicated
through an interchangeable verbal response
(though facial expressions and other non-
verbal responses can also be used).
Stages in Counselors Diagnostic
Technique
Stage 1
Primary empathy is used most because
it demonstrates to the client that the
counselor is listening effectively,
without the threat that can occur if the
counslor seems to be seeing through
clients defenses too quickly.
The clients sense of progress and of
comfort is both served at this
relationship-building stage if the
counsellor is seen as perceptive, but
not too perceptive.
Stage 2
The feedback that comes from the
counselors contract with significant
themes helps the client see his or
her won themes more clearly.
This helps the client understand
himself or herself more deeply and
re-examine relevant perceptions,
attitudes and beliefs.
 Stage 3
Responding establishes expectations about
the nature of the counselling experience.
Counselling is conveyed to the client as a
process that involves attending to oneself,
exploring, searching, and perceiving
oneself clearly.
Counselling is established as an experience
involving work, not simply conversation.
Indeed, the counselor's work is to stimulate
the clients work of self discovery.
Stage 4
Counselor is careful to offer a level of
empathy that is consistent with the
clients level of readiness, the client
will feel safe to continue the
counselling experience.
The client learns that nothing bad
will happen as a result of
communicating and that something
helpful is likely to occur.
Stage 5
Empathy communicates to the client
that the counselor has special expertise
to offer.
Empathy is not routinely experienced in
the events of daily life.
A counselor who can make empathic
contact established himself or herself as
having some special skill, which in turn,
helps the client experience a sense of
optimism about future sessions.
Positive Regard
Positive regard is caring for your
client as he is human and the
amount of time and energy that
you want to devote for the
counselee. Rogers (1957)
developed the concept that the
counselors caring for the client
can be unconditional.
Several parameters can help
counselors.
1. The counselor may be tempted
to impose should statement on
the client.
2. Control on anxiety
3. Counselors characteristics and
counselees behaviour.
Genuiness
Rogers(1942) originally defined
genuiness as the characteristics
of transparency, realness,
honesty, or authenticity.
Concreteness
As Ivey (1994) states a concrete
counsellor promptly seeks specific
rather than vague generalities. As
interviewers, we are most often
interested in specific feelings, specific
thoughts and specific examples of
actions.
Ivey (1994) suggests that concreteness
can be increased by asking directly for
specific example of troublesome
events
Example
Client I feel so frustrated with my teenage daughter. She
is completely out of my control. No matter what I
do she stays out till late hours and wont get up for
school in the mornings. Ive tried everything but it
just seems hopeless.
Response You seem very upset and worried.
with little
concretenes
s
Response You seem pretty frustrated with your daughters
with behavior and are running out of ideas
moderate
concretenes
s
Response You are frightened that your daughter is harming
with a high herself and feel powerless and hopeless. At the
degree of same time you havent given up. You are here and