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.
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To achieve Step 8, individuals will show that they can demonstrate that they are understanding more complex ideas by repeating or rephrasing what they have heard.
In the earlier Steps 6 and 7, individuals showed they were listening by using eye contact, body language, and open questions. This builds further by showing engagement with the content of what they are hearing itself.
Building blocks
The building blocks of this step are learning how to:
- Summarise or rephrase what you have heard
- Working summarising or rephrasing into conversation
Reflection questions
- What does it mean to summarise what you have heard?
- What is the value of rephrasing what you have heard?
- How would you choose between summarising or rephrasing?
- How can you effectively build this into the flow of conversation?
What you need to know
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Summarising what you have heard
Summarising is about capturing the key points of what has been said (the methods of doing this were discussed in Step 5, when taking notes).
Summarising works well when what you are listening to is not too complicated – for example, is about a process or set of directions or instructions. Here the focus is on making sure that you can repeat back the key points without significant change, and to ensure that you have not missed anything important.
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Rephrasing what you have heard
Rephrasing is an extension of summarising. Similarly, you take the main points that a speaker has made, but instead of playing that back directly, you change the way that an idea has been expressed.
Rephrasing is most helpful when the speaker is talking about more complex concepts – for example, explaining a broader principle, or an academic concept. In this case, rephrasing is a helpful test of whether you have understood and been able to process what has been heard. Putting something ‘into your own words’ requires that you have understood what has been heard already.
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The benefits of summarising and rephrasing
Summarising and rephrasing can be extremely helpful tools to help structure the flow of information. If done well, it can ensure that:
- Anything that wasn’t clear or that you misheard when listening can be addressed quickly.
- It provides the speaker with greater confidence that you are understanding what they are sharing.
- The process of summarising or rephrasing helps you to process and store the information, making it more likely that you will remember it in the future.
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The importance of timing
Timing is critical for making summarising and rephrasing effective tools though:
- If you interrupt to summarise or rephrase then it can break the flow of conversation or thought of the speaker.
- If you leave too little time then the conversation becomes disjointed because there hasn’t been time for the speaker to fully explain the idea or instructions.
- If you leave too much time, then you might miss the opportunity to correct a misconception on your part.
Ideally, the speaker would make clear that they had finished a point or idea by asking if that all made sense, or whether you had any questions? However, even if they don’t do that, they may well pause as they consider what is coming next. At that point, you can always chip in, starting with something like ‘so what you’re saying is…’ or ‘to check my understanding, am I right that…’ or ‘so is it the case that…’
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Getting it right
You can tell if you’ve got your timing right, because:
- If you’ve timed it right, then your speaker should seem appreciative of what you’ve checked or encouraged to speak more.
- If you summarised or rephrased too soon then they might seem flustered or snappy as they feel that they’ve interrupted.
- If you leave it too long then they might start trailing off, and appearing less confident to keep speaking – they may be questioning in their head whether you can keep up?
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Why this skill step matters in education
In education, teachers, lecturers, tutors or coaches will share important information with you on a daily basis. This might be in the form of instructions for a task, sharing how to complete an application form or sharing directions to an event. As these topics are not too complicated, summarising can help you to identify and remember the key points. This will ensure you follow what has been said accurately and act appropriately.
Equally, you might often listen to complex ideas or concepts such as how to answer a new type of exam question or how an advanced scientific process works. By effectively using the technique of rephrasing what you have heard, you can determine whether you have fully understood an idea. As teachers and lecturers are often limited in time, understanding how to time sharing your rephrasing is important especially if they are delivering a message to a large group of people.
Why this skill step matters in the workplace
In the workplace, there are many occasions when information is shared with us. This might include directions to the offices of a client, instructions on some new software, or sharing how to complete a report. When listening to slightly less complex content, we can use summarising to ensure we have effectively understood the key messages being shared. By clarifying your understanding, you will be able to avoid making mistakes which could have cost the business time or money.
You may also be required to understand more complex ideas such as the introduction of a new process for interacting with new customers or clients. In these situations, using the technique of rephrasing, we are able to test our understanding and demonstrate the confidence we have in taking on new tasks in our job role.
Why this skill step matters in wider life
In the wider world, when interacting with friends, family or others, we may listen to them explaining their interests, how to do something or share the details of an upcoming experience or event. In order to best understand what they are sharing and support them with it, we may use summarising or rephrasing to ensure we have correctly comprehended an idea. When speaking with one other person, they might make it obvious when you can share your summary or rephrasing but in larger groups this might be more challenging. To ensure you do not discourage someone from sharing or fluster them, you must ensure you timing is appropriate.
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!
- For summarising, ask some friends, peers or family members to have a conversation about a topic of their choosing. Throughout the conversation, summarise what you have heard. At the end, ask the speakers for feedback on how accurate you were and whether you timed your summarising well.
- For summarising, listen to a clip of people having a discussion about a topic. At the end, note down or verbalise a summary. Replay the clip, how accurate was your summary? Did you miss out any important details?
- Listen to a piece of extended talk. When an important point is shared, pause the video or audio clip and try to rephrase what was said. Repeat this a few times.
- Listen to a piece of extended talk with another person. Stop at points throughout and try to rephrase what was said to your partner. Ask them to provide you with feedback.
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Teaching It
To teach this step:
- For summarising, the teacher can start by modelling a conversation – perhaps between themselves and a teaching assistant, or one of the learners. The teacher can ask them to start giving them some key information or a set of instructions. At appropriate points, the teacher can model how to summarise what they have heard so far and how this can be built into the flow of a conversation.
- The teacher might also want to model what it looks like to try to summarise what you have heard too soon, or to leave it too late and show how you might have got lost by that point.
- The learners can then work in pairs, first on giving a long set of instructions or information (of up to 5 minutes length). This lends itself best to repetition. Encourage the listener to summarise at least twice, and probably three times during that conversation.
- For rephrasing, it is worth starting by rephrasing a single idea first. Perhaps this is a subject-related concept, or for a more meta- approach the teacher could rephrase some of the key concepts in this step.
- Learners can practice this individually by being given a concept or idea, and then telling one another or to writing it down in their own words, rephrasing what they heard.
- Then, in pairs, learners should explain a concept or idea to one another. The listener has to find an appropriate point to check their understanding by rephrasing what they have heard.
Reinforcing it
This is a skill step that lends itself well to being reinforced in class:
- For example, during regular lessons, the teacher could pause at moments to ask the learners to summarise what they have learnt or heard so far, or to rephrase it to demonstrate their understanding.
- The teacher can also continue to model that – for example, with concepts or ideas that learners find challenging, demonstrating how they rephrase these to help build understanding – which is something that teachers do naturally anyway.
Assessing it
This step can be assessed through observation or a deliberate activity. For example:
- The teacher could check that learners can summarise and rephrase by giving them all something to listen to for 2-3 minutes and then having to summarise or rephrase it, either verbally or in writing.
- The teacher will then want to check that learners can build this naturally into the flow of conversation. This could be done through peer assessment of learners as they work in pairs, or through observation of conversations.
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Build it at work:
This step is particularly relevant to individuals’ working on more complex tasks or projects and to those involved in receiving or setting work for other people.
To build this step in the work environment, managers could:
- Discuss with the individual why it is important to check you have correctly heard the main ideas when someone is speaking.
- Explain how to identify an appropriate moment to introduce summarising and rephrasing into a conversation.
- Model rephrasing so an individual has an example they can follow. To facilitate, a manager might demonstrate how to rephrase to check for understanding when the team is being told about a plan or new product.
- Set an exercise for the individual to see summarising in action. To facilitate this, a manager might set up a feedback conversation between two experienced members of staff. The individual might then observe the skill step in action as they witness an experienced member summarise the feedback they have received from their partner.
- Reflect with the individual about when they think they have seen examples of summarising or rephrasing work effectively.
Practising it:
There are plenty of opportunities for building this skill in the workplace:
- Working with colleagues: During a project when an individual should collecting staff input into plans. This might also give the individual an opportunity to practice rephrasing the idea driving the project.
- Working with customers or clients: When ideas, instructions or feedback from stakeholders are required, the individual could practice summarising or rephrasing what they have heard, to check understanding.
Reviewing it:
For those already employed, this step is best assessed through observation or questioning. This could involve:
- Observing an individual listening to a verbal report and producing an accurate written summary of the situation.
- Providing information to an individual verbally and asking them to summarise or rephrase what you have said to a third party. You could then observe whether the individual was able to do that, or question the third party to see if this was achieved.
Spotting it in recruitment:
During the recruitment process, this step could be assessed by:
- Observing the individual complete an exercise where they are required to produce a briefing report for an authority.
- The exercise might involve the individual receiving a briefing and then having to relay this information to a wider group in order to complete a task.
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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
