Observational Listening

About the Book

Conversational skills. People already talk with one another, don’t they? It should be redundant to write a book about conversational skills—or so you would think. Yet there are differences between people: one seems to get a little more done than the next. Often this boils down to subtle differences in the way they communicate. Ordinarily, people tend to ask questions with a certain goal or purpose in mind. They then listen to the answer as if the answer is based on the question as they meant it to be. Yet the other is answering based on what he understood the question to mean. Observational listening trains the listener to let go of his own goals and interpretations and concentrate on the reactions evoked. In other words, the listener tries to find out what the question meant to the other. In this way, he “gets it” and is able to bring depth into the conversation in a natural way without resorting to tricks. This book also goes further than your everyday conversation: it is directed at conversational skills in psychosocial settings. The philosophy behind the book is simple yet profound: if you realise that communication is an emotion as well as the expression of emotion, the way to becoming an excellent communicator is to understand emotion and how it translates into behaviour. This is what makes this book unique: it provides the missing link between emotion and communication.

About the Author

Markus van Alphen was born on 27 June 1960 in Pretoria, South Africa. He received his education in Pretoria and later moved to Cape Town, where he completed his degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Cape Town and studied for two years towards completion of degree in commerce. He worked for several years as a consultant electrical engineer as partner of an engineering firm before moving to the Netherlands. His focus then shifted to software development, and from there to the individual and interpersonal realm, leading him to complete a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. He currently lives in Slovenia and works as a worldwide therapist for individuals, couples and families using webcam technology. He is a trainer, lecturer and curriculum developer in undergraduate and postgraduate psychology, counselling students at various colleges and universities across the Netherlands. He writes educational books in the field of psychology for the Dutch publisher Boom, and is also a contributing author to various textbooks. As a restorative practitioner he works hands-on, being called in to resolve incidents and initiate the process of conflict resolution, as well as train others to implement the restorative approach. As a researcher he is currently associated with the Open Universiteit in Heerlen as a PhD candidate, where he is researching the development of empathy at various stages of education in the field of clinical psychology.