Using Reflections to Enhance Your Communication Skills

Active listening, sometimes called reflective listening, is one of the four key elements of motivational interviewing and a key skill for health and exercise professionals to practice and master. Active listening is much more than remaining quiet while another person is speaking. It involves listening with empathy in order to understand another person’s unique perspective and world.

Reflections are part of active (ie, reflective) listening and are used to show that you have listened to what a customer has shared and are trying to perceive and understand the meaning that the words convey. Done well, reflections can highlight a customer’s most important points, highlight value, and summarize capabilities.

If you need a refresher on the basics of active listening, be sure to read on When in doubtListen: Active Listening for Health and Exercise Professionals. This blog picks up where one leaves off by exploring various species reflections and providing strategies to help you practice this important skill.

How does Reflecting help?

Have you ever heard the saying “lost in translation?” This phrase can be used to indicate a breakdown in communication between people due to different perspectives or language barriers. Reflective listening can be used during the communication process to minimize the risk of feelings, meanings, values ​​and perceptions being lost in translation.

Each arrow in Figure 1 represents a point at which miscommunication can occur between speaker and listener. Let’s do it step by step, starting from the bottom left. In Step 1, the speaker thinks and feels something before trying to convey it to the listener, while in Step 2, the speaker conveys meaning with verbal and non-verbal communication. Between these two steps, meaning can sometimes be lost if the speaker does not accurately or clearly express what the listener intends to understand. Step 3 involves what the listener hears. Again, there is another opportunity for miscommunication between Steps 2 and 3 if the listener is distracted or simply misunderstands what is being said. Part 4 requires the listener to take what is heard and run it through their own decoding system to interpret what they think the speaker means, which is yet another place where misunderstanding can occur. At this point, the interpreted meaning in Step 4 may be very different from what the speaker thought and felt in Step 1.

Figure 1

Source: Miller, WR & Rollnick, S. (2023). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change and grow (4th ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Reflection skills are used after Step 4 to better align the listener’s interpreted meaning with the speaker’s intended meaning. Instead of guessing internally what the person means and going by that, you can find out if your best guess is accurate and give the speaker a chance to confirm, correct, and edit.

Types of reflections

There are several types of reflections you can use. Consider the following examples, which follow a client who states, “I was supposed to go hiking with my brother this weekend, but he never showed up.”

• Simple reflections they are restatements that are close enough to what the customer said. For example, “I heard you say you’re mad at your brother for not showing up for the hike.”
• Complex reflections involves guessing about the underlying meaning of what the client has said. For example, “You feel frustrated because you relied on your brother’s help to get a good workout in.” This is usually not a big jump from what the person said, but a possible extension.
• Continuing the paragraph it involves a reflective statement where you make a guess about what you think the client’s next suggestion might be, and it involves listening to both what has been said and what has not yet been said (ie, reading between the lines). For example, after your client says something like, “It really annoys me when my brother plans to practice with me and then he doesn’t show up. It’s so much easier to practice with him.” The continuation of the paragraph might sound something like this: “Exercising with a partner makes it easier to stay committed.”
• Overrated and underrated concerns give the customer an opportunity to clarify a statement. The level of intensity used in a reflection matters, so the strategic use of words that increase or decrease intensity can advance a conversation. Understanding might go something like this: “You’re a little annoyed that your brother didn’t show up.” This gives the customer permission to say more and clarify how upset they may be. The customer may turn up the volume and tell you that they are more than a little upset. The exaggeration might look something like this: “You’re furious that your brother didn’t show up.” This type of reflection allows the client to take a step back and perhaps reduce the intensity of the language used.
• Double-sided reflection incorporate both sides of a dilemma or combine the customer retention talk with the change talk he previously stated. The client’s statements are combined with “and,” with maintenance speech listed first, followed by change speech. For example, “You don’t have time to exercise and when you exercise you are more productive at work.” The use of the word “and” respects both sides of the dilemma, although words such as “but” and “however” can also be used. An important feature of effective double-sided reflections is that the word “but” acts as an eraser and puts less emphasis on what was said before the “but” and more emphasis on what is said after. The second professional’s reframing is more likely to reinforce this side of ambivalence and advance the discussion of change.

Formation of Reflections

Here are some steps suggested by Miller and Rollnick in their book Motivational interviewing: Helping people change and grow that you can get when forming a complex reflection:

1. Consider the context of the larger conversation.
2. Take a better one guess about the meaning of a customer’s statement.
3. Offering a reflection. Instead of making affairs for the underlying meaning of what was saidusee reflective statements to check your case.
4. Give the customer time to respond. Listen carefully. Yyou’ll know you’re on the right track if the customer expands on what they were saying and keeps talking. Check for alignment and move the conversation forward.
5. Be open to error. If you make a mistake, your client will let you know.
6. Follow open-ended questions with at least one thoughtful response or, even better, use multiple reflective statements between open questions. A greater proportion of reflections to questions can have a positive impact on customer outcomes.

Final Thoughts

Reflective listening is the art of hearing and is more than just a communication technique. It is a powerful tool for building relationships and trust. Showing a genuine interest in seeing the world from another person’s perspective creates a safe space for open dialogue. Remember, this skill takes time to develop, so be patient with yourself and start small. Practice reflecting during your next conversation and see the positive impact on your business relationships.

If you are interested in learning more about how to use reflections and other behavior change skills, check out Behavioral leadership skills that turn knowledge into action (worth 0.1 ACE CEC). This course explores evidence-based skills that help clients turn intentions into habits, build themselveseffectiveness and create sustainable lifestyle changes.