Practicing "Supportive Communication"

During one of my MBA classes, we were asked to do an experiment. People were randomly selected in groups of two and put in a breakout room. Each person would then describe an incident that changed, shaped, or impacted one’s perspective; the key takeaways being what has happened and what changed. Post this, the other person would summarize what s/he understood. Next, this other person would share their experience and the first person would summarize. After the experiment was over, the instructor asked everyone how they felt. And all the groups unanimously said that the communication which just happened felt like real, heartfelt communication. Every person felt that s/he was listened to with utmost sincerity- that s/he was understood. The result was building of trust between the two people. They felt close-knit and bonded together by the underlying feeling of trust.

What everyone experienced in this small exercise is what is termed as “Supportive communication”. It can be easily practiced by being mindful of certain principles. The first one is to be an "exceptional listener"- listen mindfully with empathy and without forming judgements, also termed as active listening. Active listening makes the speaker feel at ease, the speaker can connect with the listener and this creates a conducive environment to establish trust. In the class exercise, students were asked to summarize after listening, so everyone listened very attentively- they practiced active listening. And the impact of this active listening could be felt immediately by the speaker. The speaker felt more connected, s/he felt empathized. This allowed the speaker to further open up and share some more personal anecdotes. Heartfelt communication started flowing as trust started to build up. And all this started with a simple action- active listening. Steven Covey sums this concept well in his famous book “Seven habits” where he says “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Some of the other principles include:

• being descriptive and non-judgmental as people feel more comfortable in such company.
• being problem oriented than people oriented as being objective means to focus on problems and issues rather than people and their characteristics which are anyways difficult to change
• being congruent or truth telling
• being specific, and validating, conjunctive and affirming.

All these elements of empowering language can help us to develop strong interpersonal relationships in all aspects of our life including business, colleagues, friends and family as they enable us give others a large sense of self-worth and an increased value in their abilities.

PS: Thanks to Prof. Vishal Gupta for introducing this wonderful concept. Prof. Gupta has written a remarkable book "First among Equals" where he talks about the unique challenges faced by leaders as well as the way forward to remain effective in a knowledge work context.