Attending Skills
What does it mean to “attend” to someone?
Ivey and Hinkle (1970)
• Psychology class targeted professor
• Switched from non-attentive postures and listening, to
attentive and back again
• Professor went from monotone to engaged and lively, then
back to monotone (after several attempts to change the class
demeanor)
• Attending Skills: posture, eye contact, comfort level, and
listening behaviors
Posture
• Orientation
• Facing towards client
without being aggressive
• Personal space amounts
• Message path
• Open vs. Closed
• Barriers: physical,
non-verbal
• Sitting style
• What does our posture
communicate?
• Can posture make a
conversation more or less
uncomfortable?
Eye Contact
• Engagement, involvement in what’s being said
• No staring, bug eyes, glazed over, dozing, distraction, etc.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUQAeGkhsoY (Friends: Joey
tries to get Monica & Chandler to forgive them so they can have
Thanksgiving together)
• What can we communicate with our eyes?
Comfort Level
• Harder to define
• Is person comfortable with his/herself without being acutely
aware of self?
• Engaged but relaxed
• Present in the moment
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJPlGgg6wCI (Talking to
that “special someone”)
• When are you at your most “uncomfortable” with others?
Why is this?
Listening Skills
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•
•
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Nodding
Smiling
Repeating but not answering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP55nA8fQ9I&feature=rel
ated (Ray shows us just what he doesn’t know about listening)
• Encouraging someone to express him/herself verbally without
influencing them with your own preconceived notions or
biases
• Giving times of silence or thinking about what the client has
said
• Able to paraphrase what they said
Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
Don’t be fooled by me
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear,
for I wear a mask. I wear a
thousand masks.
Masks that I’m afraid to take off,
but none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that’s second
nature to me, but don’t be fooled.
I give the impression that I’m
secure, that all is sunny and
unruffled with me, within as well as
without.
That confidence is my name and
coolness my game, and that I need
no one.
Don’t believe me.
Please.
My surface may be smooth, but my
surface is my mask, my everconcealing mask.
Beneath dwells the real me, in
confusion and fear, in loneliness.
I idly talk in the smooth tones of
surface chatter.
I tell you everything that’s nothing
of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my
routine, please don’t be fooled.
Please listen carefully, and try to
hear what I’m not saying, but would
like to say.
Each time you’re kind, and gentle,
and encouraging, my heart begins
to grow wings, very small, feeble
wings, but wings.
-Author unknown
How can we really hear what
someone is NOT saying?