3 simple counselling techniques that will enhance your daily communication

We live in a pretty self-absorbed world, and perhaps we always have.  It’s just that the problems of life seem louder than ever.  Another thing that’s never changed is the challenge humanity has always had in communication; how we establish and share understanding and the feelings of acceptance.

Communication is crucial in the human way of doing things, for it is emblematic of how human we feel.  If the communication is good, we feel alive in our humanity.  If it’s not so good, we can feel like we’re dying.

Here are 3 simple techniques I use when I’m counselling that can be used as a prompt or even a reset. These techniques help us lead by example in our communication.

They help us seek first to understand, before we demand to be understood.  They impute acceptance of the other, before we require the other person’s acceptance of us.

1.     Listen attentively for the details

“Okay, yes, that’s simple: listening.  Heard it all before.”  Perhaps not the way I’m saying it.  For me, listening in a counselling space is screening out all other distraction and noise.  The only way to do that with any effectiveness is to be attentive to the details; to hang on their every word.  How I do it is I arrange details I’m curious about in speech bubbles in my mind.  When I have three or four arranged in my mind and I feel I can’t take in any more information, then I’ll interject and seek more information on one or more of those thoughts.

You may not be interested in using counselling techniques with your family and friends, but I can guarantee you, that if you set out in your listening to collect specific thoughts that your curious about, the other person will feel heard.  Focus on the details and we hear not only what’s being said but how it’s being said; the message behind the words.

2.    Wait

This requires serious practice.  Allow the pause.  Develop patience enough to allow the other person to pause as they need to in order to complete their thought.  How many of us desperately need time to find the right words to say in the right way?  I know all too well personally how even a little pressure skews my communication.  Give silence permission to bless your communications.

This also takes a great deal of self-control, for we all want our chance to say what we want to say, also, right?  If we can only have some communications where the OTHER person is the focus, we will develop humility, and when the other person feels “met” we have enhanced intimacy between the two of us.

Waiting is such an underrated skill in communication.  Revive its art and people will notice.

3.    Speak fewer words, slower

This is not only a counselling technique, but it’s also a technique supervisors of counsellors use when they work to support counsellors.  All communication could be enhanced if we just slowed down.

The fewer the words we use, the more succinct we are, the more clarity in our communication, the more meaning, and the less confusion.  It’s amazing what can be said in five well-chosen words.  “You sound hurt.”  “That makes you happy.”  “What was that like?”  “How is life for you?”  “What can you do about that?”

Practise saying fewer words.  Of course, if it’s us who another person is seeking to understand, we have the freedom to use more words.  But the simple practice of saying less helps us communicate with powerful simplicity.

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If we want to be powerful communicators, we need to recognise that less is more.  The less we say, the more we hear, the more silence we allow, the deeper the impact.

Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash