Despite variances in our sense of competence and confidence, most of us feel responsibility to do something when students are in distress. Additionally, many of us are already intervening with students in distress, whether we feel ready or not.

A source of tension for faculty and staff when intervening with students in distress is the common belief that we should somehow:

• Come up with solutions

• Provide good advice that fixes or solves

• Convince students to take quick action on what we offer

Despite this common belief, when talking to students in distress, we are more effective when we are active listeners. It is a path of less responsibility and greater effectiveness when we use active listening rather than the more commonly used approach of attempting to fix, make better, or solve.  

Active listening helps students tell and expand their stories about their distress without our expectation that we will fix or solve the issues. Often students do not readily tell others about their struggles, so their stories largely reside in the vast, bottomless place of their heads, where they often grow to unreasonable proportions.

Using active listening provides students with an opportunity to re-engage their intellects by putting order to the telling of their stories, giving language to their emotions, and hearing themselves verbalize their distress out loud. What are some of our active listening superpowers?

They involve the following:

1. 𝗗𝗲-𝗘𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Helping students reengage their intellects to their emotions, e.g. listening with a steady and slow-paced tone, keeping focus on a primary topic rather than getting lost and bogged down in a multitude of secondary and tertiary topics, or using questions to assist in thinking through options.
2. 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀: Helping students do the work of telling their stories by using small phrases such as “Tell me more,” “then what happened,” or “tell me more about what you mean?”
3. 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴: Helping students hear themselves by repeating back in small or largerstatements what the student has said, e.g. “You said you struggled? or “Let me share with you what I have heard you say so far, you said...”.
4. 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁: Validating students’ by naming the emotions you sense even if students do not use the actual words themselves, e.g. “When I listen to you, I think I’m hearing how frustrated you are.”
5. 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Encouraging students to dive deeper into definition and detail, e.g. rather than asking a closed ended yes/no question such as “Was this the first time this happened,” asking instead “Can you share with me all that was going on when this first happened?”

These techniques truly are a superpower and can go a long way toward helping students. Students are so capable and often just need to talk through their experiences so they can hear themselves out loud, which often leads them to then engage in their own next steps.

Keep in mind faculty and staff typically hold more power than students, even when we are trying to help. We can partially shift the balance of power by sharing with students why we are asking them, i.e. “I am concerned about you and wanted to find out more about what may be going on, if you are willing.” And then, of course, if a student is not ready to share at the time you ask, respect their boundaries.

As faculty and staff, we are often the first ones to notice students in distress or we may be the first one students come to. Remember, too, there are limits to our roles. While we may be the first to help students tell and expand their stories, our next best action is to guide them to campus support services and resources designed to help them, when they are ready to use them.  

A comprehensive list of campus services can be found at the university’s Mental Health website.Want to learn more about your superpowers and how to develop and use them? Check out Iowa’s“Working with Students in Distress Workshop.”

Cover image by Taylor Flowe.