Chapter 6: Healthy Communication:

It Takes Two to Reach an Understanding

Section 1: Understanding others by using active listening

• The first and most important step in good communication is learning to truly understand others.

• A common communication problem is believing that you know what someone is saying without checking it out.

Take a guess, Check it out, Respond

Four ways to take a guess:

1. Repeat

2. Rephrase

3. Get the intent

4. Reflect feelings

Repeat

• Simply repeat back to speaker exactly what was said.

Rephrase

• Saying what the person said, but in different words.

• Begins to show the other person that you understand what they meant.

Get the intent

• Guessing at the person’s main point.

• Going beyond the words to get the meaning of what was said.

Reflect the feelings

• This is like getting the intent, but instead of addressing thoughts you address their feelings.

• Sometimes, you need to get the intent and the feelings to truly understand someone.

Check it out

• You need to find out if your guess was correct.

• Don’t move on to responding before you get the speaker’s agreement that you understood his or her point.

Respond

• The process of deciding what you want to do with what the speaker said.

• Sometimes, it is enough to simply let people know you heard them.