7 Listening Tips
1) Ask questions. This is the best way to make sure the person you're listening to feels heard. Which is the point of listening to them in the first place. Ask lots and lots and lots of questions, and try to make them open ended.
2) Don't sound too much like a robot. Having a good, friendly greeting is key, and being professional is a must [Professionalism doesn't mean you have to be a therapist. It just means being able to be polite and show that you treat others with respect]. Make the conversation personalized to the member. This way, you won't be receiving messages asking "Are you a robot? Or are you a real person?" Noni is the robot here. We need to be the humans.
3) Use the self help guides! For yourself, and also, give them to members whenever relevant. They're there for a reason :D Resources like the guides are one of the best things we can give people we listen to. Not only are they super helpful, but they're very user-friendly.
4) Ask for help when you need it. That's what the Mentors are for. They signed up for that job, to help listeners when they need it. If you have any questions about anything that has to do with a chat, don't be afraid to ask. All Mentors are super duper friendly, and willing to help. There is no such thing as a stupid question.
5) Focus on feelings, not fixings. It's really important to remember that the role of a listener is not to fix everything. It's to listen. And to talk about feelings. If we get caught trying to fix everything, we end up digging ourselves into a hole, that we might not be able to get out of so easily. Focus on how they're feeling. Not how you'll fix it.
6) Follow the chat limit. Don't try to take more than 2 or 3 chats at a time [but 1 is best practice]. Seriously. No matter how many chats there are. No one person can take them all alone. There are other listeners that will take them. In the end, everyone is helped. Because, to the member, all they see is you. They don't see allllll the other chats you might have. They're focused on you, and you need to be focused on them.
7) SELF. CARE. Self care should have been #1, but it's #7. Oops. But in reality, self care is the most important thing for a listener to do. We cannot make others feel better if we ourselves aren't doing well.