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Team Talk

FACE Team Building Activity, 2008-2009

Communication: Effective Listening Skills

|Opening: Team Talk |

Team Talk: Like last year, we will include a team building packet with each issue of FACE to FACE News. As your FACE team continues to build and strengthen communication skills this packet presents activities and ideas to encourage that growth. Good communication skills involve listening and talking. When teams talk, and listen they work well together.

Coordinators: It is your responsibility to lead and take part in Team Talk. Please take the time to prepare and facilitate this session. Consider how you might adapt this activity to fit your team and its needs. You know your team best, their comfort level and the style of communication. Adjust the activity accordingly.

Getting Started:

• Materials needed: radio/CD player, pencils/pens and handouts in this packet: FACE Team Talk: Listening (yellow) and Active Listening (blue).

• Read and understand the content of this packet before conducting the team activity.

• Turn on a radio or other music. (Make it an effective “distraction”, but not too obviously different from your usual team meetings.)

|Goal: To become aware of active listening techniques, practice them, and apply them to effective team communication and|

|mutual understanding. |

|Content/Discussion: Draw a Bug—Effective Listening Skills |

Opening Idea—the importance of effective listening

Coordinator:

• Read or ask team member(s) to read the excerpt pages from Horton Hears as Who, included in this packet. Horton had many difficulties as he worked to save the people in Who-ville, because he was the only one who heard their cries for help. No one else could hear anything and therefore didn’t value the tiny dust speck the Who’s lived on. Finally, the smallest Who of all added his voice and then folks other than Horton were able to hear and became convinced that the dust speck had life on it and needed to be saved.

• Ask, “What do we learn from Horton about active listening as a communication tool?” Listening encourages and values everyone’s participation. Through listening we gain new information, ideas, facts, other’s points of view and mutual understanding. A supportive environment that “listens” to new ideas and creativity improves teamwork. A person’s thoughts and ideas are important, “no matter how small”.

Activity—Draw a Bug

Coordinator:

• Distribute pencils/pens and the yellow paper included in this packet, with Team Talk: Listening face up.

• Give the instructions: “I am going to describe a drawing that I have of a bug. Without seeing this drawing, you are to draw the bug that I describe. You may not ask questions about the bug.

• Read the description of the bug using no eye contact.

• Discuss the experience. After everyone is finished ask the team to hold up their drawings. Ask why the pictures look so different from each other. “Weren’t you listening?” Ask how everyone felt about the experience.

• Prepare to repeat the activity. “We’re going to try this again. What needs to be different so you can listen more effectively?” (Some things people may say: turn off the music, speak more slowly, let us ask questions to clarify, let us see your face as you read.) You might ask why they didn’t make these requests the first time around.

• Read the description again. Tell the team to turn their papers over to Team Talk: Active Listening. As you read, use the changes suggested by the team. Allow questions.

• Discuss the second experience. Ask team members to hold up their second drawings. Do they look more like each other? What active listening skills did you use this time? What helped your listening be more effective?

• Show the sample bug. Why do the bugs still not look exactly like the sample? Is that OK? We all bring our own experience to our communication, to what we hear.

|Application: |

Handout

Coordinator: Share the Active Listening Techniques handout. Give team members a few minutes to review the list.

Action

Coordinator: Lead/Team Members respond: Discuss ways the team can apply their learning about active listening.

• What is an active listening technique that you think is especially important?

• What are some techniques that you see other members of the team use well?

• What is a technique that you want to improve? Ask each team member to share a listening goal for the month.

• How will the use of some of these techniques help our team communication?

• How will the use of some of these techniques help in our work with home-based and center-based children and adults?

• How can we use this activity and the handouts in Parent Time and/or FACE Family Circle?

|Summary: Active listening is a communication skill that is vital to effective team communication and to communication with FACE |

|families. It takes practice. |

Close with discussing the experience. After you complete the activity, it is necessary to spend time as a group discussing he experience. Part of any team-building process is sharing what has been learned and experienced; what member liked and disliked and how they felt while participating

FACE Team Talk Listening Activity: Draw a Bug

Describe the bug.

• The bug is round.

• The bug has eight legs, grouped in pairs, with four legs on the left and four legs on the right. In the pairs, one leg is longer than the other.

• The bug has two eyes on top of the body.

• The bug has two squiggly antennas.

• The bug has two pea-pod shaped wings.

• The bug has a spot next to each wing.

• The bug has a triangular stinger on the bottom of its body.

• The bug has two feelers on each foot – one longer than the other, both coming from the same side of the leg.

• The bug has a round mouth, placed between the two eyes.

• The bug laid five square eggs to the left of the stinger.

[pic]

FACE Team Talk: Listening

The Bug

FACE Team Talk: Effective Listening

The Bug (Take two)

Active Listening

Active listening is an intent to "listen for meaning", in which the listener checks with the speaker to see that a statement has been correctly heard and understood. The goal of active listening is to improve mutual understanding.

When interacting, people often are not listening attentively to one another. They may be distracted, thinking about other things, or thinking about what they are going to say next. (The latter case is particularly true in conflict situations or disagreements).

Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding to others. It focuses attention on the speaker. Suspending one’s own frame of reference and suspending judgment are important in order to fully attend to the speaker.

From Wikipedia

Techniques:

□ Focus on the speaker.

□ Watch for non-verbal cues. These may be more important than what is said.

□ Listen to how something is said. Inflection, intonation and strength of the speaker’s voice may communicate more than words alone.

□ Eliminate distractions.

□ Give encouraging non-verbal cues. Nodding and leaning toward the speaker show interest.

□ Encourage the speaker by using words such as, “Yes,” “I see,” and “go on”.

□ Ask questions to clarify what is said.

□ Check your understanding by repeating or paraphrasing what you think you heard.

□ Respond when appropriate.

□ Control emotional responses.

□ Listen to the entire point without interrupting.

□ Give the speaker time to think as well as talk.

□ Summarize what was said.

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