Peer Counseling: The Underrated Power of Listening

The most important skill in peer counseling is listening.  Most new peer counselors are not excited by this idea.  Many are skeptical that listening is a powerful intervention.  Many have imagined themselves as helping others by giving them wise advice that changes their lives.  Listening appears to be a very passive activity. On the surface it does not appear as influential as trying to push or actively persuade a client to change their behavior. How can it be “powerful”?

First, anyone who has experience in counseling will admit that trying to push people to do things they don’t want to do is not really powerful.  It is also not effective and not helpful. We all tend to resent when people try to push us to do something. We all have ways of not doing what we are pushed to do, whether it is actively or passively resisting. Clients who are engaging in peer counseling to address a problem in life will still resist efforts to tell them what to do.  Even small children have learned skills for resisting pressure from their parents. Pressuring clients or telling them what they should do is not powerful.

This makes particular sense if we think about our clients’ prior experience.  In all likelihood, they have been told by many people in their lives what they should do to change.  They have been given insightful suggestions, wisdom, demands and commands…. None of which has worked if they are meeting with you now for counseling.  They have heard it all, but it has not helped.  By giving a lot of advice, Peer Counselors simply become the next in a long line of people who have given advice to that client – and they have experience in not using that advice.

 That is where listening comes in.  The power of listening comes from several key factors:

1.      By focusing on listening, you encourage the client to take the talking role in the counseling relationship. This seems simple and obvious, but it is critical. Virtually no one changes by being told what they should do. Real change has to involve the person talking. 

 2.      Listening is called a “nondirective” activity. You are not overtly “setting the direction” for the conversation. By not setting the direction, however, you are forcing the client to do so and to take charge of what is talked about. Since the goal of the conversation is to discuss what they want to change, you are forcing them to define the problem and the change they want. Clients often have taken a passive or avoidant stance toward the problem, or have become so discouraged that they’ve stopped trying to solve it. You are forcing them to step back into the role of solving their own problem.

3.      By listening, you are clearly communicating that the solution to the problem lies inside your client: in their feelings and thoughts, their past and present experiences, and in their decisions. Most clients don’t understand some key aspect of their own experience and may not want to see something about themselves that is creating the problem. Listening is a forceful way to continue to redirect them back to themselves, both as a source of important information and as the key decider. Some clients are so uncomfortable with their own feelings and thoughts that they try to fill the peer counseling session with conversation about sports and weather. They would love to have a peer counselor who would fill the session by talking about their own thoughts. By listening, the effective peer counselor keeps the client focused on what is important.

 4.      Good peer counselors don’t just listen and reflect back everything that the client says. Instead, they listen to everything but reflect back only the parts that seem most important. In that way, the peer counselor subtly helps the client focus on what appears to be most important. I always see this as “selective listening.” We hear everything, but we are listening most attentively for the patterns related to the problem and the client’s goal. This subtle direction is difficult for most clients to resist. They hear you reflect what they are saying, and they follow that into a deeper discussion. Again, what looks like a nondirective activity actually involves a lot of subtle direction.

 5.      Listening is part of the economy of conversation.  We all track how much we talk and others talk in conversation, and look for some sense of balance.  When someone does a lot of talking and very little listening, we feel there is an imbalance.  That often leads me to be less interested in the conversation and in what that person is saying.  By spending a lot of time listening, the peer counselor is earning the right to speak.  They are showing that they understand the client’s perspective and that their comments are based on that understanding.  The client is more likely to feel truly heard, respected and valued by a peer counselor and so they will listen to the counselor’s comments in a different way.

Be very aware of the temptation to talk too much in counseling.  It is the most common mistake of new peer counselors and also of new psychotherapists.  It usually reflects a total misunderstanding of what is truly powerful in terms of influencing clients.  Take the time and effort to develop advanced listening skills.  Remind yourself that by listening, you are pushing your clients toward an active stance toward solving their problem – and watch how they respond.  Remind yourself that we underestimate the complexity of listening – it is an advanced skill that many counselors never really master.  Overtime, become a true master of listening and you will have made real progress in being an effective peer counselor.