Improvement Plan on Basic Listening Skills

Areas to Strengthen and Improve

Self Assessment

- Nonverbal Behaviors - I need to work on having a more open posture and

keeping my legs uncrossed while talking with the client. Crossing my legs is a bad habit

I have in any situation but I need to work on not doing it when interviewing. I need to

improve on using gestures smoothly. My hands are still a distraction when I'm

talking. I need to work on keeping my hands lowered and focus more on speaking with my

overall body, than just my hands.

- Beginning the Interview - I need to strengthen my skills in explaining the limits of the interview such as timeframe and purpose.
- Reflection of Content - I need to improve on mirroring the gist of the comments.
- Reflection of Feeling - I need to improve on this area by checking up on my client to see if they are okay. I get so involved with their situation that I forget about their feelings. I also need to work on combining the reflection of feeling and content.
- Exploration - This was a poor category for me as I need to work on multiple areas. I need to improve on asking clarifying questions. Once again I was focused more on getting her help. I need to work on eliciting needed details and exploring important points. I did well on the key points but I could have gone into further detail.
- Establishing Rapport - Need to ask client about comfort level more often and check their comfort level.

Areas to Strengthen and Improve

Guest Feedback

- Nonverbal Behaviors - improve on keeping an 'open' posture when interviewing. Also need to improve on hand gestures and keeping them less distracting.
- Beginning the Interview - Need to improve on giving time limits and purpose of visits.
- Reflection of Feeling - Need to work on combining reflection of feeling and content.
- Establishing Rapport - I need to strengthen my skills in checking the comfort level of my interviewee.

Steps to Improve

- Nonverbal Behaviors - continue role-playing via video tape so I can watch myself back and critique my hand movements and having an open posture. I know that using your hands show that you're passionate about what your speaking on but I need to find the balance so that I can use my hands but not too much. I also will contact my local agency and see if I can participate in a mock interview with a professional clinician. I also will role-play in front of friends and family to get feedback on how I'm doing.
- Beginning the Interview - Study more on how to give a successful interview by researching interviews, practicing role-plays and responding to the feedback I get.
- Reflection of Content - I felt like I needed to work on this area because I wasn't quite mirroring the main points of the comments made by the client. My guest feedback disagreed and said this was one of my strongest areas. I watched the tape back again and noticed that I did model the important points of the interview and focused on outlining the main things that needed to be accomplished. But going forward I will continue to monitor this area when speaking and interviewing in my current job as well as role-playing.
- Reflection of Feeling - I will strengthen the area of combining reflection of feeling and content by listening, find the feeling of the client and define it and then reflect back what I understand the feeling to be. Also need to improve on making sure the interviewee is okay and ask how he/she is feeling. After watching the tape back, I saw that was so focused on the client's problems and the help she needed, I never asked if she was okay. I will work on this by role-playing and practicing with mock interviews.
- Exploration - I found many areas in this category that I need to work on and my guest saw me as competent in them so it's really good that you have another person observe your interview; I was apparently too hard on myself. But I found that I need to improve on asking clarifying questions by being more direct and to the point from the beginning of the interview.
Establishing Rapport - I will improve on asking the client about

Improvement Plan: When you have the completed Feedback Checklists (yours and the Guest Reviewer's), identify the areas that you need to strengthen and improve, and develop an Improvement Plan describing the observations made, the steps you will take to improve, and any other information on the Feedback Checklists, found at the end of this Syllabus. Submit your Improvement Plan and feedback sheets to your faculty member in