Use questions and active listening techniques



Use questions and active listening techniques

Active listening 2

What does ‘active listening’ mean? 2

Key principles of active listening 3

Reflective questioning 5

The use of reflective questions 5

Open-ended and closed questions 6

Other types of questions 7

What-if questions 7

Sorting and sifting questions 7

Clarification questions 7

Planning questions 8

Strategic questions 8

Organising questions 8

Probing questions 9

Divergent questions 9

Devil’s advocate questions 9

Summary 10

Check your progress 10

Active listening

Have you ever tried to do something about a problem before you really understood the problem itself? It usually doesn’t improve the situation.

Similarly, you need to understand a client’s concern or complaint before you can address it. Effective questioning and listening are strategies for getting to the crux of a problem. This is especially the case with client complaints. Even what appear to be trivial complaints can develop into something of significance, so you must ensure that you have the correct facts. When you are dealing with client complaints, it is critical that you listen carefully to the facts.

What does ‘active listening’ mean?

Reflect

Have you ever ‘tuned out’ when a person is complaining to you? Consider what may happen if someone at work is making a complaint that has serious consequences, or if the person making the complaint is a senior manager?

When you’re dealing with clients, you can’t tune out. It’s vital that you listen carefully and respond appropriately. To do this, people often use a technique called active listening.

Active listening occurs when you focus on the message you’re receiving from the other person, without thinking about what you want to say next. Your response to the sender is one that paraphrases what you’ve heard. That is, you summarise what you’ve heard, and say it back to the sender in your words. This ensures that you have understood the idea the sender wants to give you.

Key principles of active listening

Do you sometimes come away from a conversation thinking that the other person didn’t really say much? Perhaps you were guilty of not listening actively! One of the key principles of active listening is allowing the other person to talk freely.

However, be aware of spending too much time discussing what is not relevant to the task at hand. Below are more principles of active listening that aim to encourage the other person.

|Principle |Description |

|Do more listening than talking. |Give the other person time to talk. Show that you are interested in |

| |what they have to say. |

|Show encouragement. |Use non-verbal as well as verbal cues to show you are listening. For|

| |example, maintain eye contact, nod, sit upright and say ‘yes’ or ‘I |

| |see’ at appropriate places, and use a positive tone of voice. |

|Avoid appearing tense. |For example, avoid sitting with arms and legs tightly crossed and |

| |speaking in a hurried and agitated tone of voice. |

|Try not to agree or disagree right away. |If you feel you have to disagree, wait until the other person has |

| |explained and then disagree, but provide reasons for your stand. |

|Show empathy. |Imagine yourself in the other person’s position. Respond to their |

| |feelings. |

|Be ‘other-directed’. |In other words, don’t project your feelings or ideas on them. |

|Be accepting of the other person. |This means being non-judgmental and non-discriminatory. |

|Be non-defensive. |Instead, admit any errors or oversights on the part of yourself or |

| |your organisation and apologise for that. |

|Paraphrase (summarise) what the speaker |In other words, restate key facts, issues, perceptions and |

|is saying. |interpretations. When you receive a client request, even a simple |

| |one, it’s important to check that you’ve understood it correctly. |

|Be aware of the other person’s |If you need to ask questions of a sensitive nature, ask them in a |

|sensitivities. |gentle, polite and supportive manner and tone of voice. Assure |

| |confidentiality. Wait for the right time to ask as well — that is, |

| |when the other person is relaxed and you have gained their |

| |confidence. |

|Reflect every now and again on what the |For example, you might say: ‘So you were quite upset by that |

|other person is saying. |behaviour because you felt that it was quite unfair?’ This shows the|

| |other person that you understand how they feel and that their |

| |concerns and feelings are valid. |

|Show warmth and support. |Smile, where appropriate. Look concerned. Avoid being cold or |

| |abrupt. |

|Admit it when you’re lost. |Avoid pretending to understand. Simply say something such as: |

| |‘Sorry, could you just say that again?’ Clarify anything you don’t |

| |understand. This lets the other know that you have been listening |

| |and that you understand what they’re saying. |

You’ll need to wait for an appropriate situation to arise to practise your active listening, but such situations arise more frequently than you’d think. Reflect on these principles and make a genuine attempt to practise them — it may not be easy, at first.

An alternative to this might be to carry out a role play, but you’ll need to find a partner — say a fellow student, family member or friend. Set up a particular situation in which your partner can play the role of a client asking you for help. You can then practise active listening techniques in handling the situation. You may also be able to do this via a telephone or chat facility.

Reflective questioning

Active listening is one technique you’ll need to practise. A related skill is to use reflective questioning or listening.

Suppose you’ve asked a supervisor for advice on an incident, or you’ve passed a tricky question along to an expert. Now you want to report back to the client, but you don’t clearly understand the answer or solution you’ve been given.

If your supervisor’s feedback isn’t clear to you, you can use reflective questioning. This is the technique of repeating the sentence with a few changes (paraphrase), but phrased as a question.

You will have heard the way some people ask a question, with a rising tone of voice at the end of the sentence. Look at the following example.

|Lance: |So you say I should use reflective questions? |

|Olga: |That’s right. A reflective question copies a sentence like an echo, but changes the wording|

| |to say the same thing your way. |

The use of reflective questions

A reflective question allows the other person to correct and clarify any misunderstandings you have of the message.

Reflective questioning can also be used with clients and when briefing other staff. If you echo back what a client has told you, the client then has a chance to either agree with you or point out things you missed or misunderstood. This is particularly important when trying to ascertain the facts when a client is making a complaint.

Open-ended and closed questions

Can you see how active listening and reflective questioning will help you in your client dealings? Now we’ll turn to some other types of questions. We use different types of questions for different purposes. First we’ll look at open-ended versus closed questions.

Open-ended questions gather more information. Someone answering an open-ended question cannot answer with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, because it wouldn’t make sense. Closed questions do require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or a similar response. These are used to clarify what you’ve received or to seek confirmation of the idea that you have.

Here are some examples of each.

|Question style |Description |

|Open-ended questions |What kinds of products are you interested in purchasing? |

| |What do you need the equipment for? |

|Closed questions |Are you saying that your email system is not working? |

| |Are you sure that you’re happy for your repayment levels to fluctuate? |

Reflect

Think of at least one open-ended and one closed question that you could ask a client who has phoned you at the help desk complaining that their computer is running very slowly.

You may have suggested many different questions. A couple of examples are given below. Do your questions fit a similar pattern?

|Question style |Description |

|Open-ended questions |Can you tell me a bit more about the problem? |

| |What kinds of programs are you running at the moment? |

|Closed questions |Was it OK yesterday? |

| |Did you try re-booting? |

Other types of questions

What-if questions

Use what-if (or hypothetical) questions to explore the possibilities with the client (or on your own). You’ll also be able to bring out any reservations that you or the client may have. An example of this is:

What if we do not have any flights that week? Can you travel the following week?

Sorting and sifting questions

Sometimes a client might give you a lot of information. This includes clients who:

• do not really know what they want

• are verbose

• do not get to the point

• talk in a stream-of-consciousness manner (don’t organise their thoughts in any way).

Some of this might not be relevant to their request and you need to sift through the information to arrive at the client’s key issues or priorities. Here are a couple of examples:

Which one of these is a priority for you?

Out of all the features you’ve mentioned, are there ones that you are most interested in?

Clarification questions

Sometimes what the client is saying may not seem logical or coherent. Information may seem contradictory. Before you dismiss that information as useless, ask for clarification. Perhaps the client had not explained in great detail because they had assumed that you had the prior knowledge to understand what they were saying. Here are a couple of examples:

Which incident happened first?

Was it a pleasant or unpleasant visit?

Planning questions

Sometimes your client will need your help to plan ahead. An architect’s work, for example, may involve planning a house that will accommodate a growing family.

A Property Loans Officer’s work may involve planning repayments. He may ask the following question:

Do you want to pay off your loan sooner?

Strategic questions

Your client may need your help in working out how to proceed next. One such question may be:

Which position, out of the two we’ve discussed, would you like us to explore next?

Organising questions

These allow us to structure our information. Without a structure, the information would just be bits and pieces without any discernable patterns. With a good structure you’ll be able to:

• see trends or themes

• see how one bit of information fits in with others

• compare and contrast.

Here are some examples of organising questions:

Which of these documents belong to you? We’ll put these in this folder.

Which ones belong to your partner?

Now which ones are in both your names?

Probing questions

Probing questions go deep into the issue or problem. They aim to dig out insights and uncover underlying causes. Here are some examples:

What kinds of accounting tasks do you find difficult to perform manually?

Why do you find these difficult?

What are these tasks (give details of each)?

How long does it take you to perform each task?

Divergent questions

A client may come to you with a problem. Both of you may already know about the advantages involved in a certain way of doing things. Now you can both explore the risks. Once you are familiar with a certain area, you can use divergent questions to help you explore territory that is related to what you already know. Look at the following example:

We’ve now got a list of things and steps you need to undertake to achieve option 1. Now what things do you need to do to achieve option 2?

Devil’s advocate questions

Provocative questions help you eliminate myths, fallacious arguments, hype and the like. They help you arrive at facts or the ‘truth’. A client may decide that they want your latest item of stock. They’ve heard that everyone is using that type of equipment. However, you want to make sure that that’s what they really need. What they want and what they actually need may be different.

Here are some examples of provocative questions.

Do you really think it’s what you need?

Will it be appropriate for the sort of work you’re doing?

Has anyone ever researched the problem?

What evidence do they have?

Summary

We began with a discussion of the importance of listening actively when determining client requests. This was followed by an explanation of the reflective questioning technique that can be used to clarify what has been said — to ensure that you have understood clients correctly. Examples of various types of questions were given to demonstrate how questions can fulfil a range of functions in your interactions with clients — such as obtaining client feedback, clarifying and expanding client requests as well as helping clients plan ahead.

Check your progress

Now you should try and do the Practice activities in this topic. If you’ve already tried them, have another go and see if you can improve your responses.

When you feel ready, try the ‘Check your understanding’ activity in the Preview section of this topic. This will help you decide if you’re ready for assessment.

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