Summarising and paraphrasing

Summarising and paraphrasing techniques help us to:

• reflect back to the other person what we have heard
• check that we have understood what the other person has said
• let the other person know we are prioritising listening to them.

When we paraphrase, we present back to the person what they have been talking about, acting as a verbal mirror. Here is an example:

At first, it can feel uncomfortable to paraphrase. We can feel as if we are mimicking what the other person has said. This discomfort is generally the only barrier to paraphrasing well. However, when we do it, we often observe a sense of relief coming over the other person that they have had a chance to tell someone what is going on for them and confirm that they have been heard.

Paraphrasing forces the listener to focus solely on the content of what people are telling us and repeating or reflecting back what we have heard. This grounds us in what the other person is actually saying as opposed to what we may be assuming they are saying. It also gives us an opportunity to play back what we are hearing.

In doing this, we are not necessarily agreeing with the other person or telling them that they are right. Rather, that we have fully heard and understood what they are saying. When we do this, the other person will generally either expand on what we have summarised, clarify any misunderstanding they think we may have, or feel they have been heard and move on to what they need to talk about next.

When we summarise, we repeat back aspects of what the person has said using fewer words but not changing the nature of what they have said. We pick out key themes and use key words from what the person has said.

When we use summaries, as with paraphrasing we need to be prepared for the fact that we have misunderstood what the other person has said, or may have said, whether by implication or fact. To check that we are correctly reflecting what the other person has said, we may preface our summary by saying something like: ‘Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be saying…’ or ‘What I am hearing is you think XYZ – have I understood that correctly?’ Even when we hear something a certain way, it may not be what the other person is saying, and in order to summarise and paraphrase correctly, we need to be open to the fact that we may have misunderstood the individual.

Equally, when we hear what we say through someone else, it can sound different to the way we normally hear ourselves. So, you may summarise or paraphrase word for word what someone has said and they may come back and say that you have misunderstood them. Initially, we might see this as having made a mistake. However, the speaker may hear what they have said played back to them through you and realise that although this was their initial reaction, on reflection this is not what they want to be saying or indeed thinking. Whether this is because they have not expressed themselves in a way that reflects their true or c or that they

may have onsidered thoughts or you have misunderstood is not important. If we have summarised or paraphrased in a way that does not seem true or resonate with the speaker, we can always recover using the same skills. Here is an example.

In this case, the recovery will be saying something that shows you have now understood:

What is important is that the listening allows the individual to express themselves, help themselves clarify their thoughts and feel heard. If they challenge what you have said or change it, it means that the reflection has been valuable and served its purpose.

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish what is summarising and what is paraphrasing and there will inevitably be some crossover. The table below gives a picture of the distinction between the two techniques.

The listener needs to be careful about how they summarise and paraphrase. When people are talking about us or an organisation that we are associated with and are on some level championing or responsible for, the first thing we want to do is respond and put our point of view forward in order to defend ourselves or the organisation. Also, we may try to structure our summaries so that blame does not fall on us and the other person sees our point of view. In these situations, it will be really important to:

• be aware that we will want to defend and justify ourselves
• choose our words carefully so that our paraphrasing and summarising are as neutral as possible
• be prepared to adjust our summaries and paraphrases where they veer towards being argumentative or attempts at self-justification.

When we are a party to the conflict, we should always remind ourselves that we will have an opportunity to respond later, but the first step is to truly practise expansive listening to get the full measure of the other person’s perspective.

It is very easy in these situations to infer judgement so we need to find ways to make sure our summaries do not do that. So instead of saying, ‘You say I think you are doing a bad job,’ you might reflect back with ‘You are saying that you think that I think you are doing a bad job.’ In this way, we demonstrate a respect for the other person’s point of view without may to agree with it. We also avoid creating any perception of judgement which may cause the other person to feel unsafe about setting out their perspective because they are not being heard. This in turn can lead to a shutdown in all or part of the communication which can escalate the conflict again.

Reframing

When we reframe, we effectively summarise or paraphrase in a way that puts a different frame or light on the situation.

The speaker has not said that they want a change or things to be different, but has said that they don’t want things to continue as they are. The listener has inferred from the speaker’s somewhat disempowered statement that they want a change and so reframes the more disempowered statement into an empowered one in which the listener might be able to do something about the situation. There is no doubt that the listener’s judgement or preferences play a part in the reframing and we need to be careful of forcing rose-tinted glasses on the speaker. Having said this, the speaker will generally let us know if the reframe does not reflect what they are really saying, either by actively disagreeing with what we have said or shutting down and not talking as openly or at all. Again, we can amend our summary, paraphrasing or reframing to reflect the corrections that the speaker has made.

There is a concern that when we listen in this way we might lose what we might need to say to the other person, particularly if we want to explain or justify ourselves. However, if we have prepared in line with Stage 1 in Chapter 6, we can always revert to this and know that we will be able to bring these points up at a later stage. At the same time, listening may mean that we change our initial perspective and are able to move through or let go of some of our original points, concerns or issues and focus on what is most important to us.

When we are listening in this way, we should also avoid questions other than an opener such as ‘So tell me what is going on for you’ or ‘Do you want to talk about what has been happening/causing you concern?’ By avoiding questions, we allow people to tell the story and emphasise what is important to them as opposed to what is important to us on the basis of the question we have asked.

Listening behind the words

Listening behind the words means getting underneath what the person is saying. We can do this in a variety of ways:

• Noticing their body language – whether their legs and arms are crossed or they are sweating.
• Listening to important or maybe painful information that they seem to skip over or laugh about when it appears very serious.
• Gently noticing what we feel as they are talking – sometimes the feelings that are triggered in us can reflect their feelings.

We can reflect back the non-verbal communication that we notice as part of our summaries or paraphrasing. When we do this, it is important to acknowledge that it is our experience of what they are saying or how they seem to us.

In this way, we once again leave the door open for the other person to clarify any misunderstandings. For example, ‘When you were talking about that situation you rolled your eyes and I am sensing you were frustrated or irritated by what the other person did.’

Hold the listening space

Often the benefits of expansive listening will come through the ability of the listener to be comfortable with silence. This involves waiting for the speaker to find their words and to take the time to formulate their thoughts and get to the bottom of them.

Generally, we only have to wait for a few seconds to give the person a chance to think about what they are saying or add something that they were reluctant to talk about. Again, this can open up the conversation, increase trust and allow for a more honest communication. It can help the other person believe that we are not just listening in order to respond but listening because we are open to hear what is being said.

It can be challenging to control ourselves for those few seconds to allow a bit of space into the conversation, but try it a few times and see how it can change the direction of the conversations in ways we don’t always expect.

The more we practise these elements of expansive listening, the more instinctive it becomes and the more successful it can be. The success of expansive listening will be evidenced by a recognition that the person we are listening to feels heard, starts to hear themselves and thinks about and builds upon creative options.

You might like to practise expansive listening. Follow the parameters above and write down how you felt.

What did you sense from the other person in terms of what they felt and thought?

Where did you find ourself judging the other person?

What happened when you allowed for silences?

Open questions

The following open questions open up the conversation:

What would you like to talk about?

What do you mean by …?

What would you like me or your colleagues to do about that?

Is there anything else you think we should talk about?

Bear in mind some key questions in coming to a solution are those that you will have already asked of yourself:

What do you want?

What does that look like?

How far are you/we from achieving that?

What do you/we need to do to get you there?

Closed questions

It is also helpful to be mindful of the sometimes less helpful closed questions that can only be answered with a yes, no or one word answer that risk cutting off the conversation:

Do you/I?

Is it/are you?

Can you/I?

Do you want me to go ahead with that?

Checking questions

These are often (but not always) closed in nature but help to continue rapport when summarising and reflecting back. They also give the other person an opportunity to clarify what they mean.

Can I check that …

How does that sound so far?

Is that your understanding?

Have I got that right?

Expansive questions, also focus on facilitating, as opposed to fixing, in the following way

You can practise expansive listening and questioning in the following way:

• Use a very open expansive question to start off the conversation.
• Engage in expansive listening by avoiding questions for at least the first five minutes.
• Before asking the question check what judgements you have – what you think the answer should be.
• Try converting opinions you have like ‘Why don’t you do this?’ into an expansive question like ‘Have you thought about doing this?’ or ‘Do you want to tell me more about your thoughts about this?’
• Check in with yourself by asking yourself if you are leading the person in a certain direction or you are trying to manipulate them to do something.
• Always return to expansive listening in response to the answers to your questions.
• If you get stuck, think about asking the question ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Shall we focus back on what you said you want?’

Prioritise principles over personalities

The aim in a negotiation is generally to get what you want. Allowing the behaviours of the other person (personalities) to distract us in that process can lose us the opportunity to achieve that.

We can compromise getting what we really want (principles) when we get caught up in our irritation over the other person’s behaviour. We lose sight of the principles we are pursuing by getting enmeshed with personality issues. This can cause us to react to the other person rather than pursue our goals and work through the negotiation.

Choose your negotiation strategy

We can tend to adopt a negotiation strategy without considering whether it is the best strategy for the situation. We can also find ourselves responding to the other person’s strategy unconsciously and not necessarily in the best interests of the negotiations. So, it is helpful to understand what negotiation strategies we and the other person may consciously or subconsciously be using and continue to evaluate their effectiveness during the course of the negotiation.

Here are some common strategies.

Haggling

When we haggle, we negotiate much as we might when buying or selling on a market stall. One person might start proposing a high figure, the other person will respond with a low figure and they will trade figures until they land on a relatively random point somewhere in the middle that they can, generally reluctantly, agree on.

If you adopt this approach, you need to consider your offers carefully bearing in mind that people are generally prepared to make one big leap from 1 (first offer) to 4 or 5 (1st offer), followed by a maximum of 3 or 4 further negotiated adjustments arriving at say 6 or as our final position. On this basis, if you are negotiating a random trade, ensure that your first offer takes into account the distance the person might need to travel to arrive at a negotiated agreement.

The pros of this strategy:

• It recognises that an agreement can be reached without agreeing that either party is right or wrong.
• It gets the negotiation moving.
• It clarifies the range.
• It recognises the random nature of the risk of continuing the conflict.

And the cons:

• It’s difficult to logically justify the agreed result.
• There is a danger of being or feeling out of control.
• There is a danger of alienating your negotiating partner by putting in an unrealistic figure.

Identify and manage negotiation styles

The Thomas-Kilmann conflict model instrument sets out five overall ways we negotiate. We all have preferred styles that we slip into by way of habit but we can adjust these styles by consciously choosing the best style for the presenting situation. Also, the more familiar we are with negotiating styles, the easier it will be to identify the approach taken by the other party in the negotiation and to work with their style in order to best achieve our goals.

The negotiation style is different from the negotiation strategy. A negotiation strategy includes the practicalities of what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it. The Resolution Framework Part 1 set out earlier includes a negotiation strategy which includes looking at top and bottom lines and the process and tactics we will need to achieve them. Part of our strategy will centre around choosing the style of negotiation we wish to adopt to ensure that it is the most effective in the circumstances. When choosing our negotiation style we will balance using a style that is most natural to us with one that is most appropriate for the circumstances. A strategic negotiator will ask themselves:

• Would it be helpful for me to go out of my comfort zone?
• If my negotiation style hasn’t been working, is there another alternative?
• Is it better to adopt a style which is most comfortable for me?

Our negotiation style is led by and belies our motivations. These will run on a scale of ‘concern for me or us’ which triggers a desire to cooperate and, on the other hand, a concern for results which moves us to want to win by asserting ourselves and our needs. According to the Thomas-Kilmann conflict mode instrument, the five key negotiating styles are accommodating, avoiding, competing, compromising and collaborating. (See the website for more details: www.kilmanndiagnostics.com/overview-thomas-kilmann-conflict-mode-instrument-tki.)