Most counselors and officers have sat through one or more classes on Active Listening. If the instructors came from an academic perspective, it was likely that they lost the students- the problem solvers on the ground- through presentation. What follows isn’t a class or a tutorial on Active Listening, but about how to make a skill you already have work in real time… because that’s what we do here at Thug Whisperers.

The two elements of active listening are:

1) You receive the information as clearly, accurately and completely as possible

2) The subject wants to keep talking

Receiving Information

The biggest obstacle to accurately listening is that we tend to listen to the voices in our own heads first. Especially when we are emotional or we are dealing with emotional people, the conversation tends to follow very common scripts.

Subject: “I wasn’t doing nothing. I was just walking along and he came over talking crazy shit, saying he was going to kick my ass.”

How many times have you heard that? In your head you sigh and know that next he’s going to claim he doesn’t even know the man he assaulted, the other guy is going to talk about some disrespect or an issue with a woman, but it will probably really be about drugs…

That is jumping ahead in the script. At this point you are no longer listening to what was said, but planning your response to what you expected the subject to say. If you have enough experience, and this is a standard situation, it won’t screw you up much, only in the details. You will ‘know’ what the subject was lying about because the lies are pretty consistent in this script, but you will have trouble explaining to the boss or the jury how you knew he was lying.

You won’t remember or even hear the exact wording if you are responding to the script instead of the words.

The second aspect of internal dialogue is the human tendency to start preparing a response before the other person has finished speaking. We want to jump ahead to the important things that we have to say. Avoid this. Pausing and thinking and formulating response (or even withholding a response) not only convinces the subject you are listening but also controls the tempo of the conversation. The slower, quieter and lower-toned the conversation, the calmer and safer the situation is getting.

Acknowledge emotional states- yours and the subjects. Agitation, fear, anger or even an inappropriate calm in the subject are valuable clues to what may come next. When you start feeling unease, fear, anger or complacent, that is a clue as well. Is there a clue you are picking up subconsciously about what is to happen? Is the subject pushing your buttons deliberately, trying to manipulate you? How you feel will affect how and if you listen.

One of the things presented in Active Listening can feel like a trick and, if done badly, can quickly put the subject on guard. Sometimes called ‘feedback’ or ‘paraphrasing’ or ‘reflecting’ it is double-checking that you are understanding.

The reason it feels like a gimmick is that it is often taught as a formula: “What I am hearing you say is…” Who talks like that?

Talk like you. “Hold on. Let’s see if I’m following this.” “Slow down, partner, the story’s getting complicated. Are you saying…?”

Paraphrasing, saying what you understood in your own words is a good check, but it is a critical skill and far less likely to be interpreted as a gimmick when working with a subject who does not speak English as a first language, when you are working with a foreign language or you are working with a translator. In these circumstances, feedback is considered both polite and good common sense.

Discuss this extensively with your translator or Language Assistant (LA) well in advance. If not given a heads-up, some LAs will take it as an insult to his or her skills. The simple fact is that it is almost impossible to accurately tell how good your translator is. Giving and soliciting feedback is one of the ways to both assess your LA and help a poor one get the job done.

Keeping the Subject Talking

People like talking about themselves, so it is not hard to get most people talking.

Your focus is on the subject. Not only are you noting his or her emotional state and body language, rate tone pitch and volume of voice and proximics you are letting the subject know you are paying attention. Your eyes are focused, your face muscles are relaxed. If appropriate, you mention the body language in your feedback, “Partner, you said you aren’t angry but your jaw muscle is jumping and I can see the vein in your forehead, so what’s going on here?”

Acknowledge without interrupting- “uh huh” “Go on” nod. Be careful, here because many of us have practiced this as a skill to not listen without insulting someone we care about. It can trigger the same non-listening mode. Remember that your goal is to gather intelligence. You have to listen and the subject has to talk.

It has to be subtle, but some studies have shown that mirroring body language helps the subject relax. He crosses his arms, you cross your. He leans back, you do the same… It has to be subtle, especially with the emotionally disturbed (EDPs- Emotionally Disturbed Persons) or the Mentally Ill. If someone notices you are mirroring they will take it as an insult. They will believe you are mocking them.

When responding, you will paraphrase as mentioned above, ask clarifying questions or ask questions or answer questions.

Questions should be open-ended if you want the other person to talk. A closed question is one that can be answered in one word - yes, no, Tuesday. “Which pocket did you have the knife in?” is a closed question. “Why do you carry a knife?” Is open-ended. “After he hit you, did you hit him back?” is closed. “What happened after he hit you?” is open.

Closed questions are fine if you already know what happened and are trying to lock the subject into his statements, but they can feel antagonistic or bossy and might get the subject to clam up. If you don’t know what happened, or are trying to get the wording and insight you need to either disprove or corroborate a story, open-ended questions are critical.

Clarifying questions are similar to feedback but they are not about what you heard so much as what you didn’t hear. “You said that suddenly the gun was just in your hand?” is feedback; “I’m not real clear on this: where did the gun come from?” is clarifying.

When you are asked a question, respond honestly. Respectfully, but honestly. When an inmate asked me what I thought his chances were in court I said, “Mr. Cxxxxx, they're going to get the death penalty. It’s been all over the papers and people want to see you burn.”

“Damn, Miller. Everyone else lies when I ask. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Yeah. The fine art of building rapport with a murderer.

Some Details

Your focus is intensely on the subject. That can be a tactical issue. When possible, position yourself so that you can see behind you by using reflections from car windows or the subject’s glasses or something else or, if possible, so that no one can approach your back without a shadow coming into your field of vision first.

If those are not possible (they almost always are, but if not) break contact and check your six every so often. It is acceptable to let the subject notice you doing this. Also, always watch the threat’s body language. He may well see something coming up behind you and react even if he is a threat.

Watch your distance. Though most academies teach a standard, every officer’s critical safety range is different. A big part of both body language and officer safety is proximics- how close the threat is and how close he seems to want to be.

Try not to be distracted. It allows an opening if the subject wants to go bad and it also diminishes the returns of active listening. Your goal is intelligence gathering, not wool gathering.

When you catch a lie, take a moment before you jump on it. When stories contradict I’ve had excellent success with, “The other guy said you did X. Is there anything that you might have done that might have looked like X?” In the process of trying to explain away an incriminating wrinkle in a story the subject often gives away a lot.

You can use operational conditioning in a conversation. Operational Conditioning (OC- the behavior modification system, not pepperspray) is the simple process of rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior.

Humans are social primates and social rewards and punishments work as well or better than physical rewards or punishments. In practice, when the subject is behaving in ways you don’t like- getting loud, acting out, being disrespectful or going off on tangents, give a disapproving parent look or interrupt them. When the subject is behaving nicely, give nods of approval or the little rumbling in the throat you would give to a puppy. It doesn’t take much and can have profound impact over a short conversation. It also tends to work with the mentally disturbed.

Be cautious in smiling during active listening, especially as a ploy or OC reward. Most people cannot consciously do the eye movement that makes a smile look genuine. A fake smile can look fake, which will shatter your rapport or it can even look like a primate threat display. If you are one of those people who can consciously control the muscles around the eye, you can be a god at manipulating people- if you do the eye thing only it is interpreted as if you really like the person but are not smiling openly to appear professional.

Contrary to some beliefs, not everything or everyone can be handled by talking. The nature of interpersonal communication is that if it goes bad, you will be at closer range than you like (blocks away is usually good). Be prepared to defend yourself at all times. Do not get complacent. Practice posture and body language that puts you in a good defensive position without appearing aggressive or afraid.

If you need to shut down the conversation, shut it down. If the subject is working himself into a rage, if outside spectators are starting to escalate things, if you have two subjects who can’t let the conflict go, you must be able to shut things down and take control.

As long as it is safe and working, active listening is a fine tool. Hanging on to a good tool when it is no longer safe is bad judgment. The goal is information. Always remember that information is always information but it isn’t always truth.

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