Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

Treating the speaker as an equal 
You will only be able to enquire well if you treat the speaker as an 
equal. The moment you make your relationship unequal, 
confusion will result. If you place yourself higher than them in 
status, you will discourage them from thinking well. If you place 
them higher than you, you will start to allow your own 
inhibitions to disrupt your attention to what they are saying. 
Patronising the speaker is the greatest enemy of equality in 
conversations. This conversational sin derives from the way 
people are treated as children – and the way some people 
subsequently treat children. Sometimes children have to be 
treated like children. It is necessary to: 
• decide for them; 
• direct them; 
Think about the angle at which you are sitting or 
standing.
Sixty degrees gives eyes a useful escape lane.
Use minimal encouragers.
(For more, look below under 
‘Encouraging’.)
Make notes.
If necessary, ask them to pause while you 
make your note.
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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65 The Skills of Enquiry
• tell them what to do; 
• assume that adults know better than they do; 
• worry about them; 
• take care of them; 
• control them; 
• think for them. 
There is a tendency to carry this patronising behaviour over into 
conversations with other adults. As soon as you think you know 
better than the other person, or provide the answers for them, or 
suggest that their thinking is inadequate, you are patronising 
them. You can’t patronise somebody and pay them close 
attention at the same time. 
Treat the other person as an equal and you won’t be able to 
patronise them. If you don’t value somebody’s ideas, don’t hold 
conversations with them. But if you want ideas that are better 
than your own, if you want better outcomes and improved 
working relationships, work hard on giving other people the 
respect that they and their ideas deserve.