Listening Skills: The Four Stages Of Effective Counseling

1) INTRODUCTION

Listening skills is a skill which are mandatory for every counselor to be able to provide effective counseling to their client. Listening has no specific definition but often people tend to get confused between listening and hearing. When we hear we only perceive sounds but when we listen, our hearing is accompanied by a deliberate and purposeful act of mind. In short, listening means to get meaning from what is heard. Some of the reasons why listening is important is:
a) It can improve work quality and boost productivity
b) It helps employees to update and revise their collection of facts, skills and attitudes.
c) It helps employees to improve their speaking abilities.
d) It increases sharing of information that

The pyramid works upwards where the first stage is sensing the message, followed by interpreting the message sensed, evaluating the overall message and finally responding towards the message. The details about the four stages above will be explained with good rationale and examples in the following paragraphs.

i) Sensing This stage is the foundation of effective listening where listeners determine the most important information from the multitude of data received (Hamilton, 2008). This is because it is impossible to take in all the information received from their clients. As we all know human minds have the ability to listen four times faster than a person can talk regardless of the challenge to concentrate on hearing what is said rather than numerous other things going on in lives at any given situation. Some of the tips that can be applied in this stage is look directly at the person talking, start reading the body language and listen for tone and intonation. A very good example given by Arthur K. Robertson (1994), in his book ‘Listen for success’

The friend then looked at him with amazement and says ‘you hear a cricket in this noisy city?’ the zoologist than took out a coin and flips it into the air and as it clinks to the sidewalk many heads turn in response. The zoologist says quietly, ‘we hear what we listen for’ (p 45).
In summary, we choose to pay attention to things that are important or of our interest and the other are tuned out. Another good example is: Once a man attended a political rally at which about five thousand people were crowded into the hall and as soon as the candidate started speaking, the cheering and yelling was so loud that the candidate couldn’t be heard easily. This will eventually cause the man to have difficulty receiving the message due to the external