You disagree with someone, and he keeps reiterating his original point. How can you get him to turn off the broken record and listen to you? As many of you know, such repetition often means that, when you express disagreement, he feels you didn’t get his point. So he restates it.
Some of you also know the best way to disconnect this circuit is to prove you understood the other person by paraphrasing. State his view in your own words, then, ask, “Is that correct?” Continue trying till he agrees you’ve got it. At that point, you’ve proved you understand. Now there’s no need for him to repeat himself.
Mom: “Did you take your lactase before you started eating that ice cream?”
Jr.: “No. It gags me.”
Mom: “You’ll be up tonight with an upset stomach, and I’ll be up with you. How many times have we been through this? Take the medicine.”
Jr. repeats his point: “But it gags me.”
Mom paraphrases: “Do you mean it makes you feel like spitting up?”
Jr.: “Yeah.”
Junior now knows Mom understands him. He’s able to listen.
Mom: “Maybe we can try another kind of medicine.”
But some people struggle to think of a different way of stating another’s argument. In addition, if you paraphrase too much, the other person might feel annoyed.
The “plus” in “Persuasive Paraphrasing Plus” is that there are other communication skills, akin to paraphrasing, that similarly serve to let a speaker know you’re following him. These include asking for more information and offering similes.
Mom: “Did you take your lactase before you started eating that ice cream?”
Jr.: “No. It’s so gross it gags me.”
Mom: “You’ll be up tonight with an upset stomach, and I’ll be up with you. How many times have we been through this? Take the medicine.”
Jr. repeats his point: “But it gags me.”
Mom offers a solution: “Maybe I can get you a different kind of lactase.”
Jr. repeats again: “It gags me!”
Mom asks for more information: “What’s gaggy about it? The taste? The texture?”
Jr.: “It’s dry and gritty, like it gets stuck in my throat. Then I want to gag.”
Mom offers a simile: “Like chalk?”
Jr. now knows that mom understands what he’s been trying to say, so he stops repeating: “Yeah.”
Mom: “I believe they make a slick caplet that you can swallow whole, so you don’t have to chew it. Let’s put your ice cream in the freezer, run down to the corner pharmacy and get the other kind.”
Both actual paraphrasing and its cousins, asking for information and offering similes, work so well you won’t believe it till you try them. So please do! And let me know how they work for you.
Sounds so easy! I have the perfect person to try it out on.
Great! Let me know how it works.