9 Use Deep Listening to Support Cultural Safety
Learning Objectives
By the time you complete this chapter, you should be equipped to:
- Explain the key practices in active listening
- Distinguish between active listening and deep listening
- Listen for emotions and needs that may be unspoken in a speaker’s story
As you have considered models for growing interculturally, such as the DMIS, Cultural Humility, and Cultural Safety, you may already have the sense that listening is a key skill to develop. Listening well is important for avoiding assumptions, and for learning about someone’s cultural identity and experience as they want you to understand it. Without the skill of listening well, we easily respond to others based on our own assumptions, which can cause misunderstandings may even make others feel disrespected.
Active Listening
You may be familiar with active listening. This is a practice of focusing on the speaker with engagement. When we listen actively, we do not simply hear. We also take the focus off of our own experience and refrain from focusing on what we wish to say next. In addition to listening closely to the speaker’s words, active listening also pays attention to nonverbal communication.
When we practice active listening, we also focus on showing empathy. We try to understand the emotion that the speaker may be feeling, and try to respond in reflective ways that demonstrate our understanding of the speaker’s message. he challenge is to listen through our own assumptions, biases, judgments, and emotions and then to ask suitable questions to get more information. Use the following techniques.
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is restating the content of a message in your own words. Typically, it does not include feelings. This gives the speaker an opportunity to reflect on what they are communicating and to refine it if they like. When you get it right, the other person will say, “exactly!” or communicate in some other way that they feel understood. When you paraphrase what you have heard into your own words, you show your present understanding and thus enable the sender to address any clarification to the specific understanding or misunderstanding you have revealed.
Clarifying
Clarifying is reflecting on the broader context of what you understand the speaker to be saying and often comes in the form of a question. You can request the other to clarify by asking, “What do you mean by…?” This gives the speaker an opportunity to fill in any missing pieces to the interaction. The desired outcome is a clear understanding of the issue or issues chosen for attention. Clarifying is checking understanding of a message by asking to hear it again or asking for more information and details. In clarifying you help to spell out the communication of the speaker. This encourages both of you to consider the meaning and impact of words or actions. You are reflecting the intent of the verbal and/or nonverbal cues back to the speaker. Use clarifying when you want to understand what is being communicated in context.
Probing
Probing is a subset of clarifying. Probing is used to prompt a speaker to give more information or to explore a situation that is not clear to you as the listener. It creates a request to become more specific in situations that are often of an important, sensitive, or problematic in nature.
Perception Checking
A perception check occurs when you state what you perceive the other to be experiencing. A good perception check conveys this message – “I want to understand your feelings – is this (making a statement of his/her feelings) the way you feel about it?” A perception check is a way of verifying the accuracy of your interpretations. It includes a description of the information you received, your possible interpretations, and a request for confirmation. You may find that using it in non-class relationships is also useful!
Our perception of another person’s feelings can result more from what we are feeling, are afraid of, or are wishing for than from the other person’s words, tone, gestures, facial expression, etc. If we feel guilty, we may perceive others as angry or accusing toward us. Our inferences about other people’s feelings can be, and often are, inaccurate. Thus, it is important to check them out for good interpersonal communication.
Perception checking responses aim to:
- Convey that you want to understand the other as a person and to understand his or her feelings.
- Balance expressed needs, the assignment instruction criteria, and your perceptions of the learning needs.
- Help avoid actions that are based on false assumptions of what the other was experiencing.
- Help people to be more open to what you have to say.
Cautions
Regardless of which of the techniques you choose to use, you will need to listen not only for the words, but also for the feelings behind them. To truly comprehend the message a person is sending, you must try to understand the other person’s frame of reference, even if you do not agree with it. Using this strategy is an important first step in creating understanding with others.
One Step Further: Deep Listening
While active listening is an important skill for intercultural communication deep listening can help us move even further into understanding. Deep listening focuses on hearing emotions, core needs, and life history that may be below the surface of the words spoken. This practice assumes that not everything that is important is said directly, and that much of what we need to understand might be “just below the surface”.
Listening for Emotions
Like in active listening, when we listen deeply we try to identify the emotions that the speaker may be experiencing, even when these are not said out loud. Some emotions, like connectedness, happiness, and peace, are experienced when our needs are met. Other emotions, like fear, confusion, or embarrassment, are more likely to occur when our needs are not met.What do we meant by needs? In deep listening practice, we acknowledge that every person has core needs that are important to their well-being. These include physical well-being, social connectedness, respect, and the autonomy to make life decisions.
The chart below can help us to get started when considering the emotions that might be behind the words shared with us.
| Emotions when core needs are met | Emotions when core needs are not met |
| • Affectionate
• Engaged • Hopeful • Confident • Excited • Grateful • Inspired • Joyful • Exhilarated • Peaceful • Refreshed |
• Afraid
• Annoyed • Angry • Vulnerable • Aversion • Confused • Disconnected • Yearning • Disquiet • Embarassed • Fatigue • Pain • Sad • Tense |
Reflection Point
Think about a moment in your childhood that was particularly significant for you. Briefly write out the story. Next, outline the emotions that you experienced. Did these emotions indicate that your core needs were met?
Listening for Needs
As you identify emotions, the next step is to identify the core needs that these emotions may point towards. Core needs include connection, physical wellbeing, honesty, play, peace, autonomy, and meaning.
Reflection Point
Read the story below. What core needs can you identify?
Wei’s heart pounded as he entered the Canadian classroom, clutching his textbook like a shield against the sea of unfamiliar faces. When the professor asked everyone to “share something interesting about yourself,” Wei carefully rehearsed his response in his mind before speaking, only to be met with confused looks and awkward silence after mentioning his passion for competitive math tournaments—something that had earned him respect back home. During group work, his classmates spoke rapidly, finishing each other’s sentences and laughing at references he didn’t understand, while his attempts to contribute were often talked over or met with polite but distant nods. At lunch, he sat alone until a girl with bright blue hair plopped down beside him, introduced herself as Jess, and asked genuine questions about his hometown, actually waiting for his complete answers. Walking home that evening, Wei felt the weight of the day—the isolation of not being understood, the exhaustion of translating his thoughts, the ache for familiar faces—but also remembered Jess’s simple kindness and the professor’s encouraging smile when he’d finally solved a complex problem on the board, moments that somehow made this foreign place feel just a little less foreign.
Listening for the Impact of Identity
When we are listening to stories from those whose cultures are different from our own, we will also want to listen for the impact of cultural identity on life experience. Like with emotions and core needs, this might not be directly stated, and it is important to hear what is not said as well as what is said directly. When we listen for the impact of identity, we might want to consider questions like:
- What is the impact of being a racial minority in the speaker’s context?
- How does language impact the experience of being understood (or misunderstood)?
- How might a disability impact the speaker’s experience? (Anima Leadership, 2023)
Considering emotions, core needs, and the impact of identity can help us to broaden our perspectives as we listen. Deep listening allows us to encounter experiences that are different from our own in a meaningful way. By focusing on the speaker, rather than our own life experiences, we become more open to understanding cultural experiences that may be unfamiliar to us.
Chapter References
Anima Leadership. (2023, December 14). Brave Conversations Workshop.
Adaptation Statement: Content in the Active Listening section of this chapter is adapted from: Macpherson, A. and Page, C. (2020). Level One Peer Tutoring Fundamentals and Integration Workbook. Kwantlen Polytechnic University. https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/levelonepeertutoringfundamentals/, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
AI Statement: Wei’s story from content generated by Perplexity. (2025). Perplexity.ai (AI Chatbot) [Large language model]. https://www.perplexity.ai/
