not central to the direction of their thinking.
• Don’t give information to show off
. You may be tempted to
give information to demonstrate how expert or up to
date you are. Resist that temptation.
Asking the speaker for information is also something you should
ration carefully. You need to make that request at the right time,
and for the right reason. To ask for it at the wrong time may close
down their thinking and deny you a whole area of valuable ideas.
Following this advice may mean that you have to listen
without fully understanding what the speaker is saying. You may
even completely misunderstand for a while. Remember that
enquiry is about helping the other person clarify their thinking.
If asking for information will help only you – and not the speaker
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72 Improve your Communication Skills
– you should consider delaying your request. In enquiry, it’s more
important to let the speaker do their thinking than to understand
fully what they are saying. This may seem strange, but if you let
the speaker work out their thinking rather than keeping you fully
informed, they will probably be better able to summarise their
ideas clearly to you when they’ve finished.
Giving positive feedback
Feedback is the way we check that our enquiry has been
successful. But feedback can do more. It can prepare us to switch
the mode of conversation from enquiry to persuasion. It can also
help us to end a conversation; summarising your response to
what the speaker has said and providing the foundations for a
conversation for action.
There are two kinds of feedback: positive and negative. It’s
obvious in simple terms how they differ. Positive feedback is
saying that we like, appreciate and value the speaker’s ideas.
Negative feedback is saying that we dislike them, are hostile to
them or place no value on them.
Clearly the two kinds of feedback have wider implications.
Positive feedback encourages the other person to go on thinking.
Negative feedback is likely to stop them thinking at all. Positive
feedback also encourages the speaker to value their own
thinking; negative feedback tells them that their thinking is
worthless. Positive feedback makes people more intelligent.
Negative feedback makes them more stupid.
Negative feedback is usually a sign that we are adopting what
one consultant calls ‘Negative reality norm theory’. This is the
theory that only negative attitudes are realistic. We see this
theory at work every day in our newspapers. News, almost by
definition, is bad news. The phrase ‘good news’ is virtually a
contradiction in terms.
We live out the theory in our everyday lives and in our
conversations. To be positive is to be naive and simplistic; it
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