Call companion training

Training 2 - Communicating & listening

Your communication skills will be essential in creating a good connection and building a strong relationship with the older person you are matched with. Taking care to communicate with respect and really listen to the older person can make all the difference to them and have a positive effect on their lives.  

In general, try to put the older person at ease, don’t rush the conversation, interrupt or talk over them. Allow them time to get comfortable talking and opening up to you. Let them set the pace and tell their story in their way. All of this will let them see that you have plenty of time for them, you’re not impatient to get the call over with and get on with other things.  

Active listening 

Using active listening can be extremely useful to help you fully concentrate on what the older person is saying and, perhaps more importantly, make the older person feel truly listened to. Active listening acknowledges that listening is not just about being quiet while someone else speaks. It requires that the listener fully concentrates, understands, and responds. 

Here are the elements of active listening that you might find helpful, and some tips for using them to guide your conversations: 

Open questions are questions that don’t have a yes or no answer. They can help encourage the older person to open up and respond in a number of ways. Simple things like ‘tell me more about that’ ‘how did you feel about it?’ ‘what happened after that?’ can help open up the conversation.

Reflecting, using the same words the person has used will also show you are listening and encourage them to keep talking.

And summarising will help frame the conversation and give a good overview. It shows you’ve been listening. This is something like ‘so you’re saying you didn’t want to go?’ 

Clarifying what someone has told you by ending a statement with, “Is that right?” allows you to understand better and find out more. 

Short words of encouragement like ‘uh-huh’, ‘yes’, ‘hmm’, ‘go on’ help build rapport and demonstrate that you’re listening. It can be difficult to keep talking if you’re not sure the person is paying attention, so encouraging words like that are extremely helpful to show that you’re still there, and you’re still listening. 

Silence – try not to feel the need to fill silences, as that pause can be helpful for letting the older person gather their thoughts, and feel that they can take their time, that there’s no rush. 

Dos and don’ts

• Don’t assure the older person that everything will be alright and you can solve their problems and make things better.  
• Don’t change the subject away from what the older person is talking about – let them lead the conversation wherever possible if they have things they want to talk about. 
• Don’t assume you know everything about the situation, or about how the older person is feeling about the situation – let them tell you how things are for them. 
• Don’t tell the older person what to do. 
• Do use active listening to encourage the older person to keep talking 
• Do allow the older person plenty of time to gather their thoughts and express themselves.  
• Do allow silences where appropriate. 

In general remember that a gentle tone of voice, a slower pace for the conversation, and not rushing to fill silences will all help the older person to feel as though there is no hurry, that you have as much time as they need to talk.  

Self-reflection 

Before moving on to the next training, spend some time thinking about what kind of open questions you might ask in a conversation that would encourage the older person to open up and talk. What would you be comfortable saying to an older person?  

Practice leaving small silences in conversations, particularly if it’s something you know you’re not comfortable with already.