This active listening training initiates you to one of the rarest and most powerful interpersonal communication skills. Over one day, you discover Carl Rogers’ listening foundations, practice reformulation, open questioning and emotional validation. A useful posture for managers, HR functions, sales and any role demanding relationship quality.
Listening well offers a frame where the other can clarify their own thinking
For interpersonal profiles in French speaking Switzerland, active listening often makes the difference between useful conversation and surface exchange. The course relies on intensive pair exercises, concrete cases and systematic debrief. You leave with worked posture and applicable techniques.
Module 1: Listening as the starting point
Module 2: The CARPE model
Active listening was formalized by psychologist Carl Rogers and remains one of the most taught communicational skills in coaching, mediation and humanistic management. This course offers a structured approach for those who want to upskill on this posture without committing to a long cursus. In Geneva and Lausanne, many participants come from consulting, care, HR or client relations.
Active listening rests on three attitudes: empathy, unconditional positive regard, congruence. The course details these pillars in modern practical reading applicable to work. An understanding that changes posture before even practicing technique.
Simple, broadening, reframing reformulation: three variants for different uses. The course practices in pairs until fluid. A skill very visible in early results: the interlocutor feels understood, and the conversation gains in depth.
Open questions (what, how, what is…) open dialogue, where closed ones close it. The course works this simple but counter-intuitive tool with targeted examples per professional context. A technique that transforms an interview into a useful moment.
Validating an emotion (“I understand this situation is frustrating”) is not intellectually approving. This subtle distinction is central in management, HR and client relations. The course offers opening sentences and practices in role play until the nuance becomes natural.
Active listening is not adapted to all situations. The course works context reading (support need, decision need, expertise need) and posture switching. A finesse that avoids inappropriate use and reinforces professional credibility.
Managers, HR, sales, trainers, health professions, accompanists, mediators, key support functions and any collaborator in regular interpersonal relation. In Geneva and Lausanne, the course welcomes participants from international organizations, banking, care, public services and SMEs.
You reformulate easily to clarify without imposing, you hold silence without filling it, you validate an emotion without approving content, and you choose between listening, advice and expertise per need. You leave with a repertoire of opening sentences, a canvas to prepare a sensitive interview and a training plan for the following weeks.
At ITTA centers in Geneva and Lausanne, this course runs over one day with a coach or communication trainer in a small group. Format with short theory, intensive pair and trio exercises, personalized debrief. Format prioritizing practice over theory. Format alternates short technique inputs, intensive practice in pairs and trios, and trainer-personalized debrief. Beyond the day, you keep a repertoire of opening sentences, a preparation canvas and a clear training plan for the four weeks following your return to the office.
An individual interview going from managerial monologue to true clarification. A difficult client call that defuses instead of escalates. A team brief where each feels heard before debating. The course addresses these three situations in intensive pair and trio exercises with feedback from trainer and peers.
Active listening is one of ITTA catalog’s pivot skills. It combines with professional communication (course 14075) for foundations, non verbal communication (course 14080) to decode body cues, and NLP (course 14082) for calibration. Many participants enroll in one of these courses in the trimester. For managerial profiles, enrollment in feedback manager (course 23174) or difficult conversation (course 14362) is also frequent and coherent.
Active listening directly improves decision quality: better access to information, deeper understanding of stakeholder positions, lower risk of missed signals. The course briefly opens this dimension to position active listening as a strategic skill, not just a relational softener.
Active listening is also a discipline of attention in a professional environment that fragments it. Notifications, parallel tasks, internal monologues: all compete with the contact in front of you. The course briefly addresses this discipline, with simple practices to cultivate sustained attention beyond the course.
For which profiles?
Managers, HR, sales, trainers, health professions, accompanists, and any collaborator in regular interpersonal relation wanting to professionalize posture.
Difference with NVC?
NVC is a complete respectful communication frame. Active listening is a specific posture, transposable in NVC but usable alone.
Need to like speaking little?
Not necessarily. Active listening is learned including for naturally expressive profiles. Technique trains as ordinary skill.
Does active listening work remotely?
Yes, with specific adaptations worked in course: camera gaze, remote silence management, more frequent explicit reformulation, written emotional validation when oral not possible.
Do we work on personal situations?
Yes, each participant arrives with a situation to prepare. Exercises rely primarily on these real cases.
What follows?
For more, ITTA proposes courses on difficult conversation, emotional intelligence and NLP.
Is the course adapted to managers under pressure?
Yes, the course offers techniques to maintain listening quality even under time pressure: micro-listening windows, structured pauses, written reformulations.
And if I tend to interrupt naturally?
The course addresses this common pattern with specific exercises: silence holding, internal narration suppression, written reformulation when oral feels too risky.
Where do sessions take place?
ITTA has three centers in French speaking Switzerland: in Geneva (Carouge, Route des Jeunes 35), in Lausanne at the Flon (Rue des Côtes de Montbenon 16) and at Lausanne Mon-Repos (Avenue de Mon-repos 24). The training is also available in virtual classroom.
Monday to Friday
8:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Tel. 058 307 73 00
ITTA
Route des jeunes 35
1227 Carouge, Suisse
Monday to Friday, from 8:30 am to 06:00 pm.
