that we make to tell people that we are listening, that we are interested, and that we want
them to continue. Encouragers are minimal responses—enough to show that we are paying
attention and not daydreaming, yet minimal so that we will only encourage and not distract
the speaker.
If encouragers are too infrequent, the speaker will question our attention level. When
encouragers are used frequently; they become arti cial and distracting and actually dem-
onstrate non-listening. It sounds better to the speaker if the receiver varies the encour-
agers he uses, rather than repeating the same one over and o ...
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