Consultant's toolbox: language mirroring

Here’s a tool used by both professional negotiators and psychotherapists alike: conversational mirroring, or reflection.

When you’re working with a client, or need to interact with someone related to your client goals, take precise note of what terms and phrases they use to describe what they consider important. Actually write them down as you go, if your environment provides for that.

As the conversation progresses, when you describe what you’ve understood your client wants or needs, use their own words to describe it.

This runs counter to the mindset many of us have developed in school and the field over the years, to demonstrate understanding and connection by reformulating the conversation to show that you’ve integrated the concepts. That’s okay–the goal here is different. Here, we’re trying to build rapport with a client, and do so by showing that we can meet them where they are.

Language is powerful. Speak their language, not your own. If your client describes their problem as “incredibly frustrating”, don’t call it “challenging”. Call it “incredibly frustrating”.

Ironically, this can actually be a more powerful way to build your own understanding of the client’s needs than reformulation and summarization, because it forces you to listen more closely, rather than get sidetracked in abstracting the stated issues to larger concepts in mid-conversation.

(You can still do all that cognitive stuff–reformulating, abstracting, figuring out what strategies to apply and what levers to lean on! Just do them out of band. When your client is talking, actually listen to them. This is harder than it sounds.)