Reflect & encourage: Try this — Keep up two conversations by reflecting and encouraging

🎯 To sum it up

Reflections and encouragers prompt your conversation partner to share more about their feelings. They allow your conversations to go deeper, and lead to a greater understanding.

💪 Your exercise for this week: use a reflection and encourager in two conversations

Your task is to assess how much more you can get out of a conversation by using reflections and encouragers.

✅ Step 1: Choose two conversations this week where you think you’ll be able to try out these conversation skills. They can be in your personal or professional life.

✅ Step 2: Before you join those conversations, skim this pathway to refresh your knowledge of reflections and encouragers. Take notes if you need to.

✅ Step 3: Use a reflection and encourager in both conversations you chose in step one.

A reflection will help confirm that you understand what the other person is feeling. The encourager will help them to elaborate, giving you a better understanding of their emotion.

Afterwards, note down what you noticed, return to this card and let us know how you felt it went.

👋 Before you go…

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📚 Further resources

Connected, but alone?, TED Talk by Sherry Turkle

Why reflecting feelings works (even on adults!), by Dr Brenna Hicks

Voice-only communication enhances empathic accuracy, by Dr Michael W. Kraus

A guide to productively communicating your feelings, by Psych Company

How to more clearly communicate about mental health struggles by SimplyOli, a podcast available from Apple and Listen Notes

💬 What do you think?

Share your experiences in the comment section – did using these techniques improve your understanding? Did they change the outcome of your conversations?