Paraphrasing, Questioning, and Listening

This week in my Connected Coaching course, we are taking about the skills of paraphrasing, questioning, and listening.  I've had a few good insights from the material this week.

First, when paraphrasing someone before responding to them in an online environment, you can use the paraphrase to make up for the lack of facial expressions by including what you think the person might have been feeling.  For instance, "You sound so happy that...." when a specific emotional response was only implied and you want to make sure you've got it right.  Our resources suggest that if you get it wrong, the speaker will usually correct you.

We were given this graphic about questioning:

And in the online class, we learned about "positive presuppositions"-- the idea that the way we phrase our questions can open or close the conversation.  Instead of "Why are some of your students falling behind?"  you ask "How do you support students who are falling behind?"  Presupposing that a positive change is already occurring.

We also took this quiz on listening and I scored in the average range.  To tell the truth, I was surprised because I think that I'm a better listener than that.  I tried to answer honestly about all listening situations in general and not just those in my professional life.  Perhaps if I scored myself only on professional situations I would score higher.  My 10 year old daughter would agree with my overall score-- she often complains that I'm not really listening to her and I've been trying to do better with her.

The most interesting thing we learned about this week was the Ladder of Inference (good video about it here and a blog post here).  I was really struck by this model because it's something I feel I was already aware of in my own thinking without having a formal model.  When I am sitting with my own problems or with someone who is struggling, the rungs of this ladder are the things I question in myself and others.  Did I miss some information somewhere?  Did I add meaning where none was intended or where another meaning was intended?  Am I making assumptions based on the wrong meaning?    Are there other conclusions I could draw?  I'm always questioning in this way.  And hey, there's a name for it!

I'm still a bit concerned that the overall Connected Coaching model is not for me.  Connected Coaching as defined in this class is all about the positive, and I think there is occasional value in tackling a problem as a problem and not an "opportunity".  Of course, I've never been a person who embraces any model whole, I'm very much a "take what works, and leave the rest" kind of person.  This week was filled with "what works" moments for me.