Listening
Initially, the skill steps concentrate on being able to listen effectively to others - including remembering short instructions, understanding why others are communication and recording important information.
Individuals then focus on how they demonstrate that they are listening effectively, thinking about body language, open questioning and summarising and rephrasing.
Beyond that, the focus is on being aware of how they might be being influenced by a speaker, through tone and language.
The final steps are about critical listening - comparing perspectives, identifying biases, evaluating ideas and being objective.
Speaking
Initially, this skill focuses on being able to speak clearly - first with well known individuals and small groups and then with those who are not known.
The next stage is about being an effective speaker by making points logically, by thinking about what listeners already know and using appropriate language, tone and gesture.
Beyond that, individuals focus on speaking engagingly through use of facts and examples, visual aids, and their expression and gesture.
Beyond that stage, speakers will be adaptive to the response of their listeners and ready for different scenarios. The final steps focus on speaking influentially - using structure, examples, facts and vision to persuade listeners.
Problem Solving
The first steps focus on being able to follow instructions to complete tasks, seeking help and extra information if needed. The next stage focuses on being able to explore problems by creating and assessing different potential solutions. This includes more complex problems, without a simple technical solution.
Beyond this, the focus is on exploring complex solutions - thinking about causes and effects, generating options, and evaluating those options. This extends into analysis using logical reasoning and hypotheses.
Finally, individuals implement strategic plans to solve complex problems, assess their success, and draw out learning for the future.
Creativity
The first few steps focus on the individual's confidence in imagining different situations and sharing their ideas.
The focus is then on generating ideas - using a clear brief, making improvements to something that already exists and combining concepts.
Individuals then apply creativity in the context of their work and their wider life. They can build off this to develop ideas using tools like mind mapping, questioning, and considering different perspectives.
The most advanced steps focus on building effective innovation in group settings and by seeking out varied experiences and stimuli. Finally, individuals support others to innovate, by sharing tools, identifying the right tools for the situation and through coaching.
Staying Positive
The early steps focus on identifying emotions - particularly feeling positive or negative. Building off that is the ability to keep trying - and then staying calm, thinking about what went wrong, and trying to cheer up and encourage others.
The focus then turns to identifying new opportunities in difficult situations, sharing those, and adapting or creating plans accordingly. At more advanced steps, individuals identify and manage risks and gains in opportunities.
Finally, individuals support others to stay positive by managing their own response, helping others to see opportunities and creating plans to achieve them.
Aiming High
The focus is then about working with care and attention, taking pride in success and having a positive approach to new challenges. Building on this, individuals set goals for themselves, informed by an understanding of what is needed, and then be able to order and prioritise tasks, secure resources and involve others effectively.
At the higher steps, the focus is creating plans informed by an individual's skill set, with clear targets, and building on external views. At the most advanced level, individuals develop long-term strategies. These are informed by an assessment of internal and external factors, structured through regular milestones and feedback loops.
Leadership
At the earliest stages, the focus is on basic empathy - understanding their own feelings, being able to share them, and recognising the feelings of others. The focus is on managing - dividing up tasks, managing time and sharing resources, managing group discussions and dealing with disagreements.
Beyond that, individuals build their awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, and those of their teams. This allows them to allocate tasks effectively. They then build techniques to mentor, coach and motivate others. At the highest steps, individuals will be able to reflect on their own leadership style and understand its effect on others.
Ultimately, they should be able to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses, and adapt their leadership style to the situation.
Teamwork
The next steps focus on making a contribution to a team through group decision making recognising the value of others' ideas and encourage others to contribute too.Beyond that, individuals improve their teams through managing conflict and building relationships beyond the immediate team. At the top steps, individuals focus on how they influence their team through suggesting improvements and learning lessons from setbacks.
Ultimately, individuals support the team by evaluating others strengths and weaknesses and bringing in external expertise and relationships.
Skill Step
Skill Step
Skill Step
Skill Step
Skill Step
Skill Step
Skill Step
Skill Step
To achieve Step 0, individuals will have to be able to listen to others, without interrupting.
This is the first step in building this skill, and provides the foundation for more advanced steps in Listening.
Building blocks
The building blocks of this step are learning:
- What it means to listen
- What it means to interrupt and why to avoid it
- Some strategies to avoid interrupting
Reflection questions
- What is listening? How do we do it?
- Why do we listen?
- What is interrupting and why do we do it?
- What is wrong with interrupting someone?
- What are some things that we can do to stop interrupting?
What you need to know
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What it means to listen
Listening is about being able to receive information through our ears, and then thinking about it so that we understand what is being said.
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Barriers to listening
We cannot listen if we do not try to, if anything is in the way of our ears, or if we are thinking about something else.
It is important to listen because:
- We might learn information that helps to protect us, or to keep us safe
- We might understand how someone else is feeling about something
- We might learn how to do something better
- We might understand something new that we hadn’t understood before
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What does it mean to interrupt?
Interrupting is stopping what someone is saying. You might do this by speaking, or by looking away or doing something that shows that you have stopped listening.
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Reasons for interrupting
We might interrupt for different reasons – including some positive reasons:
- We might have ideas that we are excited to share
- We might think of something that we want to say right away
- We might agree with the speaker and want to tell them straight away
- We might be running out of time to talk about something
Often though, we interrupt for less positive reasons:
- We might disagree with them and want to put across our point of view
- We might not be finding what they say interesting or relevant
- We might be bored with the conversation
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Problems caused by interruptions
Interrupting others causes several problems:
- It often makes the person you have interrupted feel like you don’t care what they are saying, or that they are not interesting.
- It often makes the person you have interrupted feel that you think your opinion is more important than what they have to say
- It means that you have missed out on what is really being said
- If you let someone else talk for longer, you might be surprised about what you learn – and they might say something you did not expect
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How to avoid interrupting
We can all get better at not interrupting others. At the start, this will have to be a deliberate approach of actively thinking about how we are behaving and thinking.
Over time, as with all skill development, this will become more of an automatic habit, and not something that requires the same level of thought and attention.
Some strategies to try out are:
- Do try to be quiet, especially if you are normally talkative
- Do try to remember what is being said
- Do apologise if you accidentally interrupt and let the speaker talk again
- Do check if someone has finished before speaking, if you’re not sure
- Don’t presume you know what is going to come next – try to think about whether anything you are hearing is a surprise to you
- Don’t use any pause in the conversation to start talking
- Don’t feel that you need to say something to show you agree – nodding and maintaining eye contact are much better ways than interrupting someone
If you have to interrupt – for example, because you have run out of time for a conversation, or because there is an emergency – then you can still do this politely and apologetically.
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Why this skill step matters in education
In school or college, we spend lots of our time studying and learning. To learn, we need to follow instructions, build up our understanding of different subjects and topics and work with others. We cannot listen if we do not try to. When studying, listening is vital in order to remember important information.
Interrupting, or stopping what someone is saying, occurs in all schools and colleges. It can mean that individuals may miss important ideas from others and learn less.
Why this skill step matters in the workplace
In the workplace, we need to listen to many different people for lots of different reasons. You might work in a team or with others and when multiple people want to share their ideas, every person should have the opportunity to do so. If your job involves manual tasks, you may be given instructions on how to do something safely and it is important that the speaker can deliver these in full without interruption. If your job involves interaction with the public, customers must feel listened to. If a customer is interrupted before they finish speaking, they may feel that their needs have not been met.
In some workplaces, key decisions are made during meetings. Although our interruption may be done for positive reasons, by doing this we might negatively impact the decisions being made and the opinion your team and leaders have of you.
Why this skill step matters in wider life
In our social lives, we often spend time speaking with friends or family and taking part in activities with others such as sport, dance or music. These require us to be able to listen without interrupting. By interrupting others, we could upset someone we care about or make them feel like we are uninterested in what they are saying. We might also miss out on something interesting or misunderstand what is being said and do something wrong. This could result in losing a match, singing the wrong words or falling out with friends.
How to practise this skill step
To best practise this step of Listening, apply what you have learnt to a real-life situation. Choose one or more of the activities below, remind yourself of the key points and strategies in the step, and have a go!
- Ask a friend to monitor you for interruptions: if they see you doing it, ask them to flag or make a note of it and share these back. Try to enlist multiple people to do this in different situations. How often did you interrupt?
- Start by seeking out group discussions in school, college, in a sports team, youth group etc. Observe the conversation and try to identify when someone interrupts. What signs could you look out for? Why has someone interrupted? Is it for a positive or negative reason? How do you know?
- Repeat as above and observe the impact of the interruption. How does it impact the speaker? The interrupter? The audience?
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Teaching It
To teach this step:
- Get learners to ask a friend to tell them if they interrupt, or see them interrupting someone else
- Ask learners to get feedback at the end of a conversation whether the other person felt that they had interrupted them at all
If the teacher wants to use an activity to practise this skill step on then you could use a graduated level of challenge:
- Start with one learner delivering a monologue to another – for example, about their weekend, holiday, or what they like doing at home. The other learner has to listen without interrupting for up to 3 minutes. They can then reverse roles.
- Then proceed onto having a conversation where they both have to share ideas and listen to one another. For example, having a conversation about what a great party would look like, or what they would like to do during their school holiday. You can have a third learner to act as an observer to highlight any times that one learner interrupts the other.
Reinforcing it
This is a step that needs regular practice to become a habit. The teacher can:
- Encourage learners to reflect occasionally on whether they have been able to listen to one another without interrupting.
- Model good listening when other learners are speaking, or recognise when learners have been showing good listening.
- Keep visual reminders around the learning space about this specific skill step.
- Maintain achieving this step as a target for all learners over a sustained period – for example, by having it as a target for the month.
Assessing progress
This step is best assessed through observation. For example:
- During class, the teacher could keep a tally of when learners interrupt the flow of conversation or one another.
- The teacher could observe learners’ interactions with their peers, to see how well they can listen to one another without interrupting.
- The teacher could set a target for the class, that you reduce the number of interruptions of one another that you see over time.
Build this step
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Build it at work:
This step is relevant to everyone who listens to others at work.
To build this step in the work environment, managers could:
- Discuss with the individual why it is important not to interrupt others – whether colleagues, customers or partners. This can use the reflection questions outlined above, and ask the individual for their ideas.
- Explain to the individual about what the effect is on customers, clients or colleagues if they are interrupted.
- Model some of the techniques to avoid interruptions described above, providing employees with an example they can follow. This can also include how they avoid interrupting customers and other partners.
- Set an exercise for the individual to observe colleagues who are experienced at managing clients or customers. They could observe them listening to customers without interruption.
- Reflect with the individual about whether they feel that they have been able to listen without interrupting after a week.
Practising it:
There are plenty of opportunities for building this skill in the workplace:
- Working with colleagues: During check-ins or team meetings, ensuring that the individual can listen without interrupting.
- Working with customers or clients: When having conversations with customers or clients, focusing on listening without cutting off or interrupting those individuals.
Reviewing it:
For those already employed, this step is best assessed through observation. For instance:
- Tracking the number of instances where the individual interrupts the flow of conversation.
- These could be further categorised by whether the individual has apologised for the interruption or not.
The step could also be assessed by customer or colleague feedback.
Spotting it in recruitment:
During the recruitment process, this step could be assessed by:
- Observing the individual during an interview and checking that they are able to listen for a sustained period without interrupting.
- Observing the individual in their interactions with other interviewers or applicants and whether they can listen to others.
Build this step
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We work with a wide range of organisations, who use the Skills Builder approach in lots of different settings – from youth clubs, to STEM organisations, to careers and employability providers.
We have a lot of materials available to support you to use the Skills Builder Universal Framework with the individuals you work with, including:
- Tools for self-reflection
- Materials to support you to teach the skills, if appropriate in your setting
- Reward systems like printable certificates
We also do a lot of work with organisations who join the Skills Builder Partnership to build the Universal Framework into their work and impact measurement systems. You can find out a lot more using the links below.
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At home, you can easily support your child to build their essential skills. The good news is that there
are lots of ways that you can have a big impact, including:
- Talking with your child about the essential skills, what they are and how they are useful in all
aspects of life, whether at school, home or in the workplace - Talking about how you use these skill steps in your own work or wider life
- Helping your child to identify where they already build their skills at school, at home or
through other activities and clubs - Praising your child when they show they are using the skills well, and helping them to feel a
sense of achievement - Encouraging them to recognise and talk confidently about their skill strengths with others, and
supporting them to develop their skills further
