Dear ones, I work as a volunteer in emergency counselling, but we get further training courses from time to time and now I was able to practice good conversation skills and active listening in the first two of six days of a training seminar. As I really enjoy sharing knowledge that I find useful, I’m taking you there with me.
In the seminar, I actually had to put aside quite a lot of things that are important in journalistic interviews, but further training is only useful if you take a different perspective and gain a lot of new insights.
How to conduct good interviews with young people
The whole time I was thinking: Wow, this can be applied not only to acute crisis counselling, but also wonderfully when dealing with teenagers. How many parents write to us saying that it’s really difficult to get into a conversation with their adolescents or not to let conversations escalate until someone leaves the scene rolling their eyes?
Have you heard of the „listen, don’t judge“ trend? Where someone just listens – without judgement? On Instagram, I also showed the great listening room from the initiative Momo listens, where someone just sits and is there while you let your story out.
As soon as our innermost voice comes out from the vocal chord via the mouth, we humans go into processing. This is how we sort things and categorise them for ourselves. That’s why we sometimes just have to talk ourselves free and it’s not about the other person, but about ourselves.
Since this tends to be looked down upon by society as a whole („she’s really chatting away“), we are sometimes inhibited, but what if it’s allowed? When it’s even explicitly encouraged? We gain so many insights by talking things out that sometimes we don’t even need advice, just an ear.And let’s take a look at ourselves: how often do we make direct judgements when we are told something? Or reinforce emotions by agreeing („Oh, yeah, that’s not at all what he/she did!“) or offering solutions („Have you tried xy?“).
And yes, of course all of this is justified, but we quickly slip into adultism mode or into a tonality of „Grandma’s talking about the war“ because we have so much more life experience.
It can be incredibly good to simply let what the other person says stand and accept it, not in a solution-orientated way, but in pure acceptance. Would you like to try this out with your teenagers?
The important thing is: this shouldn’t be a monologue. We listen attentively and give the conversation a structure by making statements (not asking questions! That’s really difficult at the beginning). Here’s an example spun from memory of how such a conversation might go.
Because yes, when we’re actively listening, we’re allowed to interject with sentences. This alone also helps with sorting. You can do very little wrong here, because if what you say is not true, there will be retorts and the other person’s emotions will also become clearer. I’ll include this in the following conversation:
- Young person: My father is never here, he’s always working. Me: That burdens you.
- Teen: No, I wouldn’t say a burden, I rather miss him.
- Me: You’d like more time with him.
- Teen: Exactly. I’m much more like him than my mum, she’s always so busy with her own things.
- Me: That makes you feel overlooked.
- Teen: Yes, sometimes, but it’s never as relaxed as when they’re both there. They complement each other really well.
- Me: Your parents are a good team.
- Teen: I would say so. Even if they sometimes argue…
It’s really amazing how good this is for the other person, we’ve tested it in several role-playing games. I was also allowed to tell a story and I felt accepted and seen and simply good in this setting.
So I would like to encourage you to just leave things as they are, not to judge them, to let the children come and really listen to them, because this brings insights and directions that we might otherwise have overlooked.
This doesn’t have to be created in an artificial situation of „Come on, let’s talk“, but if you notice that your young person starts talking, then you can give it a try.
They lead the way, we only set milestones in such conversations. And often so much is sorted out just by talking about it that we don’t need any external suggestions for solutions, otherwise we come up with the best ideas ourselves.
I find it fascinating what a technique like this can achieve (and I was also sceptical!). Would you like to try it out and tell me about it afterwards? You can also try it out first with a good friend for dinner or in your partnership… I’m curious to hear what you think.
