with many facilitation tools, facilitative listening is perhaps most useful when there is a chance that conflict may arise.  Facilitative listening is sometimes known as ‘active listening’ and is ultimately about making sure that all group participants are properly listening to each other.

The following are techniques to help with facilitative listening:

• Paraphrasing

It may be that the listener does not totally understand the statements being made by someone:

• The listener could ask the speaker to restate their argument using different words
• The listener could state their understanding of the speaker’s words but in the listeners’ vocabulary

Both of these are examples of paraphrasing.

Part of your responsibility as a facilitator is to be aware of the listeners ‘body language’ and if you believe that one or more are not fully understanding what is being said, you could ask:

1. The speaker to PARAPHRASE their statements
2. A listener to paraphrase their understanding and confirm with the speaker.

• Mirroring

Workshops are set up for participants to express themselves but more than just space for expression is needed. If a participant speaks without a sense of being heard, they are likely to either ramp up their expression or else shut down neither of which is desirable for collaborative decision making. Mirroring requires that the speaker can feel that they have been listened to.

Mirroring may take a variety of forms:

• After several people have spoken, a facilitator gives a summary of what has been said so far 
• The facilitator can offer a direct paraphrasing back to someone who's just spoken, offering a restatement of the feelings and main points of what was said 
• The facilitator or a workshop scribe can write key points onto a SHARED display that everyone present can view. 
• After a general discussion, a synthesized statement may be drafted by one or a few people based on what was said

Mirroring may HAPPEN in the moment of a session or in after/between sessions as part of a longer, iterative process.

The effectiveness of Mirroring may be enhanced by checking with those reflected to see if the Mirroring was accurate.

Not all the Mirroring needs to be done by one central facilitator.  A facilitator can also invite others to participate in Mirroring, whether in the whole group or in pairs or small groups.

Mirroring summarizes the state of current knowledge.  Once what is now known is acknowledged, that naturally opens space for new ideas and creativity to emerge, whether for one participant in a meeting or for a group as a whole.

• Making space

Participants in a decision-making workshop need to be focused especially when listening.  Therefore, they need a space where they will be comfortable and without distractions.

As a facilitator, ensure that the workshop space:

1. Has no external distractions; noise from roadworks, air-conditioning rattling, next to a noisy office etc
2. Is it a comfortable temperature
3. Has sufficient refreshment facilities available
4. Has enough space to accommodate the number of participants and ‘break-out’ sessions

• Stacking

This technique to aid facilitative listening is called ‘Taking Stack’ and its purpose is to facilitate discussion and decision making in which all participants have equal say in a conversation.  Otherwise, in a structure-less setting, an individual or a small group of people could easily dominate and shut out other participants.

For this method, one group participant needs to fill the role of the Stack Keeper whose responsibility is to structure and order the dialogue of the decision-making process. 

“The Stack” is the order of participants who are speaking.  If a participant raises their hand to say something, the Stack Keeper puts them on “Stack”; their name is put at the bottom of stack list.  When the person at the top of Stack has finished speaking, the Stack Keeper crosses their names off and announces who the next two participants on the stack are. 

Thus, the Stack Keeper is the person responsible for identifying who speaks and when. The Stack Keeper must constantly be paying attention and looking around the room to see who wants to SPEAK.

There are other hand gestures to indicate a request for more immediate contribution when someone else is speaking:

• Direct Response

If a participant has a “direct response” to something that another group member said, they should make the hand motion shown in the picture (index fingers out, thumbs up, moving hands up and down in opposite directions). A “direct response” is only a correction to something that was incorrectly stated by another participant, an answer to a question that another participant had, or that is so important that it must be said at this moment.

The Stack Keeper allows this participant to state their response before the conversation GOES on. 

Correct Usage: “You asked who volunteered to take over your shift? That was me.” OR “Actually, the store spent $100 dollars yesterday, not $1,000.”
Incorrect Usage: “I disagree with what you just said, because…” 

• Clarifying Question

Any participant may make the hand gesture in the picture to indicate that they want to ask a “clarifying question.”  

The Stack Keeper allows them to ask their question before stack goes on. 

Correct Usage: “Wait, what were our expenses last week?”
Incorrect Usage: “How can you say that when you disagreed with Jeremy’s point?”

• Point of Process

If a participant feels that the group discussion is not following the correct procedure or a discussion has gotten off topic, they may make this hand gesture and say out loud “Point of Process.” 

The Stack Keeper allows them to speak before the next person at the top of the stack. They must then say how they think the discussion has gotten off topic or is not following procedure. 

• Example 1: “I’m not sure why we’re talking about shifts when the agenda says we’re supposed to be talking about salaries.”
• Example 2: “There’s a proposal on the table, and I think we should resolve that before we move on to anything else.”