| Effective Listening | Ineffective Listening | |
| Non-verbal Behavior facial expressions, gestures, body language, tone of voice, and other physical indications of mood, attitude | Listener maintains positive posture; avoids distracting mannerisms; keeps attention focused on speaker; maintains eye contact; nods and smiles when appropriate | Listener looks bored, uninterested or judgmental; avoids eye contact; displays distracting mannerisms |
| Focus of Attention where one’s attention is directed | Listener keeps focus of comments on the speaker: “When that happened, what did you do?” | Listener shifts focus of attention to himself / herself “When something like that happens to me, I … “ |
| Acceptance attitude of reception toward the information | Listener accepts ideas and feelings “That’s an interesting idea; can you say more about it?” | Listener fails to accept speaker’s ideas and feelings: “I think it would have been better to …” |
| Empathy ability to understand and share the feelings of another | Listener empathizes “So when that happened, you felt angry.” | Listener fails to empathize: “I don’t see why you felt that” |
| Probing exploring or examining | Listener probes in a helpful way; “Could you tell me more about what led you to feel that way?” and follows up: “You said that …” | Listener fails to probe into an area, to follow up on an idea or feeling. |
| Paraphrasing express the meaning of using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity | Listener paraphrases at an appropriate time to check understanding | Listener fails to check by restating in own words important statements made by the speaker |
| Summarizing brief statement of the main points | Listener summarizes progress of the conversation from time to time | Listener fails to summarize |
| Advising offer suggestions about the best course of action | Listener widens the range of ideas by suggesting a number of alternatives | Listener narrows the range of suggesting a ‘correct’ course of action |
Source: Gibbs, G. (1988). Learn by Doing. Available at: https://thoughtsmostlyaboutlearning.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/learning-by-doing-graham-gibbs.pdf
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