COMM120 Group Presentation Outline Topic: Active Listening Skills in Family Relationships I. Introduction Listening is essential for the well-being of family communication and provides significant benefits. Your family members and partner values and listens to what you are saying. Listening helps to relate, form, and maintain relationships. An important aspect of listening is to become aware that it happens in stages. The key is to identify listening barriers and apply active listening skills to enhance the relationship. A. Key Interpersonal Principles and Concepts 1. Listening is process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages. a. The stages of listening include receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding. Suggestions: Resist until you fully understand, assume the speaker has goodwill, distinguish fact from inference, and identify any bias or self-interest from the speaker. b. Listening barriers include physical and mental distractions, biases and prejudices, and avoiding premature judgment. c. The styles of listening effectively polite listening skills include avoid interrupting the speaker, show empathy, maintain eye contact, and positive feedback. The Techniques of active listening include paraphrasing the speakers’ meaning, remain objective, and focused on content of message. 2. The relationship type family. a. Family includes such factors as shared roles, shared history, and shared living space. b. The types of families are traditional couples and independent couple II. Two Communication Challenges and Problem Solving Strategies A. Listening skills in Traditional Family relationships 1. Challenge: “One of the biggest problems my husband and I face are our listening skills. He tends to stage hog, which makes me feel as though my ideas are not as important as his are. I never feel fully listened to. I tend to pseudo listen, which leads to conflict situations and we end up arguing.” 2. Problem-Solving Strategy: Make a date with husband in a distraction free environment. Talk about the importance of employing polite listening skills. Address the challenge of not having equal talk time. Emphasize the importance of empathy by encouraging husband to explore the feelings of wife by listening. Additionally, stress the importance of maintaining eye contact and giving positive feedback while practicing a silent listening response. Schedule a follow-up date to check progress about issue. B. Listening skills in Independent Family relationships. 1. Challenge: “One of the biggest problems my wife and I face are our listening skills in regard to getting side-tracked and not really listening to what the other is saying. She jumps to conclusions and is not aware of what I am saying. She starts making interpretations of things that I did not say and mean. I tend to react by getting emotionally aroused and cranky” 2. Problem-Solving Strategy: Make a date with husband in a distraction free environment. Share with wife the need for change (using “I” language) and ask for her viewpoint. Generate possible solutions to the behavior observed. In this case, it is important to become aware of listening barriers such as prejudging the speaker. Address the challenge by suggesting active listening skills that include paraphrasing and remaining objective and focused on the content of the message. Schedule a follow-up date to check about progress. Works Cited Barinaga, Marcia. “Listening in on the brain.” Science, vol. 280, no. 5362, 1998, p. 376 . Academic OneFile, ezproxy.cuyamaca.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE