Are you picking up the full content, emotion, and intention communicated by employees?

Here are some terrific questions to help you go further into engaged listening for content, emotion, and intention.

Content (the content and context of the speaker):

• What is the speaker saying?
• What are the facts?
• What are the inferences?
• What does the person mean?
• What is the speaker not saying?
• How are they slanting what they say?
• How much of their content is experience (what happens to them)?
• How much of their content is behaviour (what they are doing)?
• How might someone else say this?
• How might they say this to someone else?
• Is there conflict in the content?
• What is the context of the communication?

Emotion (feeling and mood communicated in speaking):

• How is the person communicating with me?
• What is the emotion or emotions?
• Do I sense a motion in the emotion?
• Is the emotion stable or is it changing?
• How comfortable is the person with their emotional expression?
• At what level if the emotion guiding or governing the speaker?

Intention (stated or implied action):

• Why is the person speaking with me?
• What is my role in this listening encounter?
• What is it that they want me to do?
• How much of the intention is embedded in the emotion?
• Is their intention stated?
• Is their intention implied?
• How does the intention change as I listen to the person?

David Zinger has a Master’s of Education degree. He specialized in counseling psychology and learned to fully listen and teaching engaged listening while teaching counseling psychology for 25 years. Hire David to speak at your organization or conference.