Use questions and active listening
techniques
Active listening
What does ‘active listening’ mean?
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Key principles of active listening
3
Reflective questioning
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The use of reflective questions
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Open-ended and closed questions
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Other types of questions
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What-if questions
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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
Check your progress
Reading: Use questions and active listening techniques
2005
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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.
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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 nondiscriminatory.
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 is saying.
In other words, restate key facts, issues, perceptions
and 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
sensitivities.
If you need to ask questions of a sensitive nature, ask
them in a 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.
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Reflect every now and again on
what the other person is saying.
For example, you might say: ‘So you were quite upset
by that 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.
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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.
Reading: Use questions and active listening techniques
2005
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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?
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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:
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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?
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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?
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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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Reading: Use questions and active listening techniques
2005