Empathic Listening Examples List

Life Coaching > Interpersonal Skills > Effective Interpersonal Communication > To build a fruitful human relationships, listening plays a vital role. Effective listening is about getting the message, emotion and the content when the other person is talking with a non-judgmental, and accepting attitude. There are several types of listening such as judgmental listening is judging instead of listening, active and passive listening is listening with full attention and just hearing, detective listening is to find the hidden information, defensive listening is defending rather than listening, Selective listening is capturing part of the information, pseudo is false or fake listening, and empathetic is listening with genuine concern.

Empathic Listening Skills Examples

JADE SPIDERS is a simple mnemonic that helps to remember different types of empathic (also called empathetic) listening skills. Different types of empathic listening skills are summarized using JADE SPIDERS acronym that helps to enhance your interpersonal communication skills:

Jjudgmental
Active
Detective
Empathetic
Selective
Pseudo
Inactive
Defensive
Evaluative
Reflective
Sympathetic

Judgmental Listening

During judgmental listening Opinions and critics are made on the counter part rather than concentrating on the issue. Example of judgmental listening is when a person says, "I was hurt" and the other person thinks, "You deserve it". One of the traits of Good listening skills is to have a neutral attitude and outlook towards the issue.

Active listening

listening to feeling, emotions, beliefs, attitude, and action "non verbal cues"is active listening. Active listening involves both heart and brain. Active listeners encourage the other person to talk, show keen interest to understand and identify the issue. Active listeners also use verbal communication tools such as transition statements and rapport building phrases in their speech.

Detective Listening Techniques

This type of listeners listen to get hidden information and details. Detective listening usually happens when the listener suspects a lie or dishonesty from the counter part. Imagine a situation where a manager, who sanctioned a sick leave to his subordinate, spots him in the supermarket. The next day, the manager would listen to the subordinate's excuses of being sick in a detective listening manner. to catch the lie about being sick yesterday. The conversation goes something like this:
Manager: What happened to you yesterday?Subordinate: Not feeling well, bed ridden.Manager: Really? What tablets did you take?While the subordinate answers, the manager listens in a detective manner to prove the subordinate's dishonesty.
One of the examples of listening detectivity is when a manager listens to his/her team member.

Empathetic Listening

In a conversation, the person puts himself/herself in the place of other person is empathetic listening. Common phrase used during empathetic listening include, "I understand", "I know how you feel", and "How can I help you". Empathetic listening is one the most effective listening skills, which is prominent among successful sales professionals, corporate trainers, and winning leaders and managers.

Selective Listening

Only a part of information is absorbed during selective listening. This could be due to various reasons such as noisy place, to many interruptions like phone calls, or low volume by the speaker, or disinterest from the listener. However, selective listening, sometimes, is also effective. For instance, when a manager is blasting, the subordinate selectively listen the issue rather than focusing on the harsh words. A good selective listener would filter all the verbal communication barriers, which includes redundant words, generalized statements, negative statements, verbal fillers, and listen to the content, emotion and prosody behind the communication

Psuedo Listening

Listeners of this type seem to be listening but they are not. Nodding head, looking interested, or uttering words such as ahn..ok.. are some verbal cues that are contradicting to the fact that they are actually thinking about something else rather than listening.

Inactive or Passive Listening is Hearing

JADE(Green) SPIDERS,
Visual Mnemonic for Listening Skills

The information just goes to one ear and comes out from another with entering the brain or heart. Passive listeners may not be listening at all.

Defensive listening styles should be avoided often

Anything said is taken personally by the defensive listener. One of the examples of defensive listening is when a manager asks, "Why the task is incomplete", a defensive listener would say, "It is not my fault". Though the manager was talking about the task, the subordinate took it personally. Often, defensive listening should be consciously avoided. A good listener would listen to issues rather than taking things personally.

Evaluative Listening

Analyzing the issue, getting deep in the challenge to understand and to find the solution are some of the characteristics of evaluative listening. Though critics are made to see whether the issue is good or bad, right or wrong, finding the solution is the focus during evaluative listening.

Reflective listening

Reflective listeners are waiting for the other person to stop talking so that the listeners can proceed talking. In fact, sometimes they are not actually listening but mentally preparing the content and waiting for an opportunity, such as a pause from the other person, to continue with their issues.

Sympathetic is helpless listening

During this listening process all that you can do is feel sorry for the listener. For example, you will become a sympathetic listener when someone says, “My father expired”.
To be an Empathic listener avoid (or use scarcely or uses it only during certain appropriate situations):

Detective
Defensive
Judgmental
Inactive or Passive
Pseudo and
Reflective types of listening.

An empathic listener would fall in the below types of listening:

Active
Selective
Empathetic types of listening.

Listen with Empathy when you're:

listening to stories and anecdotes
receiving compliments
persuading or negotiating with someone
using assertive language
getting disagreements or someone is saying, "No" to you.
delivering presentations
receiving feedback
handling interpersonal conflicts
getting introduced to someone, or when someone is trying to grab your attention.
building rapport with others

You can build interesting interpersonal empathetic listening skills when you develop you intrapersonal skills, which is part of life coaching. To build fruitful interpersonal relationship empathetic listening skills is important besides other interaction skills such as providing information and questioning. This simple easy-to-recall mnemonic device, JADE SPIDERS, can help anyone who would like to remember the techniques of effective empathic listening skills.