A Powerful Listening Strategy to Improve Communication

This powerful listening strategy can help your communication. 💡👂

It will help you to deescalate hard conversations, or move from conflict into connection. It will initially feel unnatural, but the results will speak for themselves.

It’s simple, but not easy...

 💡 Before you respond: reflect back what you have heard the other person say. 💡

🌀 3 Tips:

• Paraphrase rather than repeat like a parrot.

• Use slightly different words to show you aren’t just listening, you are synthesising.

• Do it even if you disagree. They far more likely to engage with your responses if you show you understand their’s.

🌀 2 Observations:

• You’ll get direct feedback about whether you’ve done a good job at listening: they will tell you.

• Reflecting back might even help the other person gain more clarity on their position.

🌀 4 Benefits:

• Reduces misunderstandings, as it tests whether both of you are both on the same page. 

• You’re less likely to pre-prepare your response (a.k.a not listening!)

• It demonstrates ‘other focus’, rather than ‘self focus’. This calms the other’s nervous system.

• It slows down the conversation. Fast heated talks lead to saying things we don’t mean. This is triggering and makes good outcomes harder to achieve. Slow is fine.

🌀 6 Examples:

“If I heard you correctly, you feel…”

“To try and summarise what you said…”

“OK, so what I’m hearing is…”

“Can I reflect back what I think I heard?

“To try and capture what you said, your thinking that….”

“If I was listening well, I noticed you brought themes of…. and that you’re feeling…”

🌀 Summary:

Paraphrase and summarise what the other person has said before you launch straight into your response. It helps them feel understood, heard, and seen.