Develop the active listening and questioning skills needed to conduct more effective resident conversations during retrofit engagement.
This course gives resident-facing professionals, particularly Resident Liaison Officers, a practical grounding in two connected skills: active listening and purposeful questioning. It covers the habits that get in the way of genuine listening, five concrete strategies for staying present and responsive, and how to sequence open, probing, and closed questions to draw out what residents actually need to say. Framed around real retrofit engagement scenarios, the course treats these as learnable behaviours rather than personality traits, with the aim of producing more accurate assessments and more durable resident relationships.
Active listening, passive listening, backchannelling, paraphrasing, summarising, open questions, probing questions, closed questions, funnel technique, resident engagement, retrofit, Resident Liaison Officer, household vulnerabilities
This lesson opens with a scenario in which a Resident Liaison Officer fails to pick up on a resident's underlying concern and loses her from a retrofit programme as a result. You'll see how easy it is to miss critical information when focused on your own checklist rather than the resident in front of you, and understand why active listening is a practical, teachable skill rather than a matter of personality. The lesson sets out the module's three learning outcomes: distinguishing active from passive listening, using questions appropriately, and applying both together in a realistic engagement.
This lesson distinguishes hearing from listening and introduces four common barriers that get in the way: planning your reply while the other person is still speaking, selective attention to information that fits your agenda, assumptions based on past conversations, and environmental distractions. You'll then work through five concrete strategies for active listening, presence, backchannelling, not interrupting, paraphrasing, and summarising, and practise telling active and passive behaviours apart.
This lesson introduces the funnel technique for structuring a resident conversation: starting with open questions, narrowing with probing questions, and finishing with closed questions to confirm specifics. You'll learn practical question starters for identifying knowledge gaps, drawing out household needs and vulnerabilities, and addressing hesitation, and you'll examine why "why" questions often land as judgemental and how to reframe them into something that invites rather than challenges.
This lesson brings listening and questioning together in a branching scenario following Denise, who is carrying out a whole-house retrofit assessment with a reluctant resident. You'll choose how she should respond as the resident raises concerns about disruption and a household pet, and how she should close the conversation, reinforcing that good questions create space for the resident to talk while active listening ensures those answers are actually used.
