Advanced communication skills for the confident consultant
Counselling Skills for Consultants (Part 3 of 3)
In this three-part series of The Skilled Consultant,
will highlight some counselling tools and techniques that can super-charge your client relationships. Jo has a CPCAB qualification in Counselling Skills and an MSc Genetic and Genomic Counselling. She is also the Marketing Director for Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training, so well-placed to translate skills from one world to the other.The purpose of this series is to introduce and explain some tools which can support you in developing exceptional client relationships. It is worth keeping in mind the trust equation; these counselling skills particularly support high intimacy and low self-orientation.
In Part 1 of this series, I explored the foundational counselling skills of empathy and unconditional positive regard. In Part 2, I provided five tools that anyone can use to enhance their active listening skills.
With that all tucked firmly under your belt, it’s time to move on to some super-skills for the unafraid….
Self-disclosure
Very simply, self-disclosure means revealing things about yourself to your client. Some level of self-disclosure can be very positive for relationship building. It can help you create a connection over a shared experience or perspective. This may be about work, somewhere you’ve lived or travelled, parenting, or hobbies. It supports the intimacy part of the trust equation.
But beware - too much self-disclosure can be damaging for the relationship. Consider how your client may feel if you start venting about the argument you had with your partner this morning, sharing details of your medical problem, telling them about an award your kid has won, or discussing your thoughts on current politics.
Even if you don’t stray into dubious topics, just talking a lot about yourself demonstrates high self-orientation and therefore negatively impacts the trust equation.
Getting self-disclosure right means revealing only the right type of thing in the right amount of detail at the right time.
Always ask yourself…
Should I be sharing this at all?
How much detail is it appropriate to share?
Is now a good time to share it?
Advanced empathy
In Part 1 we explored the difference between sympathy and empathy…
If empathy is joining someone who tells you where they are, advanced empathy is finding them when they’re not quite sure where they are. To do that, you have to listen very carefully to what they are saying and work to identify the feelings that sit underneath their words.
Maybe it would go a bit like this…
MD Client: I’m really feeling the pressure at the moment. Revenue isn’t where it needs to be and the shareholders have called a meeting. I’m increasingly irritated with the Board - none of them are focused on what matters and I seem to be the only one who is stressed about the inevitable lay-offs that are coming if this continues.
Consultant with empathy: It sounds like you are carrying a heavy burden and feeling a lot of responsibility at the moment. That must be tough.
Consultant with advanced empathy: It sounds like you are feeling a bit fearful for the future and perhaps quite vulnerable given your place at the head of the organisation?
The consultant with empathy has done a good job of meeting the client where they are. Stressed and feeling the pressure.
The consultant with advanced empathy has gone a layer deeper to try and understand why the situation is stressful and what feelings it evokes. Fear and vulnerability. Notice that the suggestion of these feelings is a question. If you are taking a bit of a leap, you should always make it easy for the other person to either agree or disagree with you.
When you get this right, it’s brilliant for building intimacy and getting quickly to the root of a problem.
Challenge…using immediacy
When your communication skills are well-honed, you may sometimes notice inconsistencies in the person you are talking with. It may be that they say something which is contradictory to something they said earlier. It may be that they are saying one thing but their body language is telling a different story.
It can be useful to challenge an inconsistency if you spot one. Your client may not be consciously aware of it, so the challenge can help both of you reach a clearer understanding. Or it may help your client be more open about something they are struggling with.
It’s very important, however, that a challenge does not feel threatening or confrontational. Remember that it’s necessary to maintain Unconditional Positive Regard to nurture and preserve the relationship.
A great technique for safely challenging an inconsistency is immediacy.
Immediacy encourages an exploration of what is happening in the present moment. Very simply, you should be transparent about your observations, reactions and interpretations. These must be bounded in the immediate - not delving into events that precede your conversation or concerning the future.
It might sound like this…
I’m hearing you say that new product development is your biggest growth opportunity, but earlier you were talking about your focus being market expansion…?
As you’re talking about the great relationship you have with your CFO, I’m noticing that you seem a bit tense and your fingers are tapping the table, so it’s making me wonder if there’s a bit more going on there?
You’re presenting these three options as equal in merit, but when you talk about option B you are much more animated, and that enthusiasm is affecting how I feel about it.
Hopefully none of these challenges feels critical or confrontational. In each case, the consultant is either playing back an observation they’ve made or sharing how the interaction has made them feel. There should always be space for the client to use or reject the challenge as they feel fit.
And that concludes our three-part series on Counselling Skills for Consultants. We’ve covered empathy and unconditional positive regard in Part 1, active listening skills including body language, minimal encouragers, paraphrasing and summarising, clarifying questions, and staying curious in Part 2, and now the advanced skills of self-disclosure, advanced empathy, and challenge using immediacy.
If you’d like to discuss how Honeycomb could help train your consulting team in these, or a myriad of other skills, please get in touch with Deri at deri.hughes@honeycombps.co.uk.
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