The most valuable skill I’ve ever learned isn’t about performance, mindset, or even resilience. It’s communication.
In this solo episode, I’m teaching you one of the most powerful tools I use as a coach, mentor, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, keynote speaker, parent, and partner. It comes from motivational interviewing and it’s called OARS: Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflective listening, and Summarizing.
These skills have completely changed how I show up in conversations. They’ve made me a better coach, teacher, partner, mom, and human.
Motivational interviewing is a client-centered communication approach designed to guide people toward what matters most to them. Instead of telling someone what to do (which often undermines autonomy and competence), this framework helps people feel heard, understood, and empowered to make their own decisions.
In this episode, I walk you through what active listening really means (and why most of us aren’t actually doing it) and how to ask open-ended questions that deepen conversations. I discuss how affirmations and reflective listening builds trust and shared understanding. I also give real-life examples you can use immediately with your partner, your kids, your team at work, or your friends.
And yes, we talk about AI. Because as AI handles more intellectual tasks, our human communication skills will matter even more.
If you want stronger relationships, better conflict management, and deeper connection in your personal and professional life, this episode gives you one skill to practice today.
Top 5 Takeaways:
- Communication is a partnership, not a directive
- Open-ended questions deepen conversations
- Reflective listening builds trust
- Affirmations reinforce strengths and values
- In an AI-driven world, human communication skills are a competitive advantage
LINKS
– Learn about meditation from Oren Jay Sofer
– Episode on how to be a better communicator
LISTEN TO SONYA
If you want to work towards your goals and more, check out my self-paced online course: Moxy & Grit Mindset Academy.
Episode Transcript
Sonya Looney 0:01 I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I’ve been doing a lot of communication training in organizations. I’ve been doing sorry. I’m sorry over I’m going to let you in on a little secret about communication. I do a lot of communication training in organizations. I also am a coach, mentor. And coaching skills is a lot of communication skills, because you’re trying to help people feel heard, you’re trying to help them feel understood, and you’re also trying to help them articulate what’s most important for them so that they can choose what their next best action is going to be. Coach Training was one of the most valuable things that I’ve ever done. Not only did it give me some additional ways I can add value to the world, but it’s added value to all of my relationships, because it completely changed the way that I talk to people. Sonya Looney 2:17 This communication skill I’m going to tell you about also was helpful as a teacher. I’m a teacher in a master’s program at the University of Pennsylvania, and I’m also doing a lot of guest lectures, so being able to acknowledge people’s questions and comments in this way helps. It helps in conversations with my husband when we need to strategically solve problems around the house. I use it with my kids whenever I talk to them. So this communication skill comes directly out of motivational interviewing. Should I define this properly? I’m Sonya Looney 3:16 okay, this type of communication comes from something called motivational interviewing, which is a client centered approach that is used in coaching and counseling, but you can use it in your daily life. In short, it’s a way of guiding people, instead of directing them to talk themselves into what they actually want. But you can use this even whenever people don’t need to make changes. You can just use it as a general conversational tool. It comes with a lot of different things. Whenever we’re helping people work through problems, it’s really a partnership. Instead of telling people what to do, because a lot of times when you tell people what to do, you undermine their their psychological needs. You undermine their their competence, their sense that they can figure things out and their autonomy, that they have a choice in that matter. And you can build relatedness. You can build personal connection with people while they are moving through conversations and even changes. So looking at your conversations with people as a partnership, as a way to draw out people’s most important things, the deeper meaning and values and strengths behind what they’re talking about, and meeting them with compassion can really help them. So the toolkit I’m going to share with you, and I can share a graphic that I made for one of one of one of the workshops I recently did, and I did not make this up. This comes straight out of emotional motivational interviewing, and you can just look it up as well. The toolkit is called oars, and I’m going to give you a demo of this. But the goal of how we listen to people is called active listening. It’s listening. With presence and intention and choosing a skillful response. So a lot of times when we’re listening, we’re listening to either tell them what we’re going to say next or thinking about that, and we’re not actually thinking about them at all. We’re not watching them. We’re not watching for the nonverbals. We’re not patiently waiting. And sometimes it can be hard when people are talking for a long time to help me stay focused. Whenever people are talking for a long time, I actually have a word that I come back to to help me stay mindful. I just say like I say, stay, stay. Stay with it. Stay with the listening. When you start feeling agitated in your body, it’s listening with an intent to build shared understanding of something so not necessarily to solve every single problem, but to build shared understanding. And again, you can use this in just general conversation with people, or you can use this in conflict management. Or you can use it whenever people are just like at work, whenever people are trying to if you’re a client facing person and you need to talk to people, and the last thing is how you respond. This is a skill set that you can’t just listen to once or read in a book. It’s something that you have to actively practice basically forever, and it feels awkward at first, but it becomes second nature over time. If this is something that you’d be interested in me doing a workshop on for you, like you personally, or for the podcast all the podcast list community, or for your work, let me know, because I’m trying to figure out the best way to help people not just understand and hear but to actually practice these things. So here are the different, the different things that you can use whenever you are listening to somebody to be better at conversation and better at helping work through a problem, or just to help people feel seen and like they matter number one, and this is going to go out of order so well, I’ll just tell you it in order, I guess so. Oars is the acronym for motivational interviewing. O is for asking open ended questions, questions that can’t be answered with a yes or a no. Open ended questions usually start with a what or a how or a why. You can even add a little bit of curiosity, I wonder, or it seems that, and then you can ask a question so a what, how, why or when question. A lot of times we ask questions like, do you, are you, will you? And whenever people can answer a simple yes or no, it doesn’t allow for further explanation or shared understanding or just even deepening the conversation. So in general, when appropriate, try to ask questions that are open ended, where somebody can elaborate deeper on how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking about. The second is affirmations. So affirmations are reinforcing what somebody is saying, so noticing what the person said and recognizing the skills, strengths and values of the person or something hard that they did, just affirming them, without actually saying anything, without giving advice, just affirming them. And again, I’ll give you an example in a second. The R is for reflective listening, so reflecting back what they said so that you can demonstrate understanding and give them a chance to correct you if you’re wrong. Reflective listening has a lot of different styles to it. It could be as simple as parroting, so literally, just repeating back what somebody said to you and and then not saying anything, so just literally repeating back what they said to you. You could paraphrase what they said to you, or you could listen for the deeper meaning of what they are saying to you, and comment on that deeper meaning that you think that you’re hearing. And last is whenever you’re having a like a longer conversation, summarizing so all of these skills. You might notice, I use these as a podcast host. I use them all the time. This is such a key insight on how to be a good interviewer as well. If you watch Oprah, she’s a master at this. So the summary is reinforcing key points of the conversation to integrate what you’ve heard and again, like this might seem overwhelming, because you’re like, how am I going to listen to all these things and do all these different like remembering what people said, and like knowing how they’re feeling. And this is a master skill, so it just takes a really long time to practice. And it starts with just doing it in your in your friendships and your family, and then maybe branching out and trying it at work, if you want to take one thing away from this to try if this is too many things, you can use the I’ll have it so that you can download it on the show notes, and I’ll also include it on my social media with a link. If you are hearing this and want it, pick one thing to work on, just one and don’t worry about the rest. And once you feel like you have that one thing mastered, then move on to the second thing, and then the third and the fourth. And over time, it gets easier. Whenever I was learning to be a coach, we practiced this in triads, and we did this for a year. So it was a really long process of learning how to do it, and we had people observing us while we were doing. It. Sonya Looney 10:07 So I’m going to give you an example in a moment. It’s going to be weird because I’m going to be playing two people, but I think the first thing, if you’re going to pick one, I would pick reflective listening, because that helps you just learn how to be a better listener. Okay, here’s an example from, maybe you’re talking to your friend. Your friend says, I’m really thinking about signing up for my first race, but I am not really sure if I can do it, or if I have time to train for it, or if I should even do it. So is your friend asking you for advice? So what you say back is you reflect back what they said, Hmm, it sounds like you want to do a race, but you’re not really sure how to make it happen. So there’s a paraphrasing. And then the friend could be like, yeah, like, it’s something I’ve always been interested in, but I just, I’m not quite sure how to how to make time for it. And then you can say, yeah, like, you want to make time for this race. You really want to try it, but you’re just not quite sure. So you can keep reflecting back what they said, but if they want you to help solve the problem, that’s when you add in your open ended question. You really want to sign up for this race. I wonder what would need to happen in order for you to make time for it, and then your friend would start talking again. So there’s an example of reflective listening. If they’re coming to you without a problem, if somebody’s coming to you just expressing something to you, can just label the emotion. This is what you do with kids as well. They come up to you and they’re like, positive or negative. So what we’ll do, it will do, I don’t even like using the word negative, but a positive emotion. So oh my gosh, let’s see. I got something just me think of an example. I ah, Sonya Looney 12:28 oh my gosh. I booked a trip to my start over, oh my gosh. I booked a trip to Mexico. I’m so excited to tell you about it, and then you reflect back their emotion and maybe even with the same amount of intensity you booked a trip to Mexico. You must be so excited. So there is a reflection, and then the emotion Tell me more. And I actually did some other podcasts for you guys that we’ll put in the show notes on active, constructive responding, so it’s how to respond to people’s good news, which we’ll also talk about this. I’ve also done a podcast on nonviolent communication, which also has how people communicate their needs. I don’t know if I’m getting this across, but I’m trying to just give you one example, or examples of how you can use this. So I’m going to do a summary for you. I talked about oars, from motivational interviewing, listening to people with active listening, with presence, intention and skillful responding, where you can ask them open ended questions with the what, how, why or when, you can affirm their skills, strengths and values, which I’ll do an example of that I talked about, reflective, listening, so saying back to them and either exactly what they said or paraphrasing what they said, and then letting them elaborate more, and then giving summaries, which you are hearing me do right now. I’m creating a summary for you of the things that we just talked about to integrate everything. So now I’m going to give an example of an affirmation. And again, an affirmation is appreciating and recognizing skills, strengths and values of a person. And these go such a long way for helping people feel that they’re valued and that they’re understood. You can use these at work in the meaningful work literature we had tomorrow, miles and Wes Adams on here to talk about meaningful work. And this is in their book. We’ve had Zach Mercurio on here talking about mattering at work. We’ve he’s talked about that as well. And this also comes directly from the motivational interviewing literature. So how do you give an affirmation? I’ll give an example. With my kid. They come home with a piece of art that they worked on. They’re like, Mom, look at this painting I did. And I say, Wow, I can see how patient you you were whenever you were doing that. And I imagine that it got quite challenging at times, and you didn’t give up. So I rainforest two different types of skills that I saw on them, and then I can tell them why it matters. And now you’ve you know, with your patience and your determination, we have this beautiful piece of art to hang in our home. So that matters, so that I have a beautiful piece of art to hang in my home. So there’s an example of how you can use that. That’s an affirmation you can use it at work. So somebody, maybe you are in management, and somebody comes up to you, and they, they come. Did a task, or maybe they managed a conflict really well. You can say, Wow, I can see how much you were listening to that person and how you really cared about making this right. That is so helpful, because our organizational values are aligned, or like this aligns with our organizational values of community, or something like that. You could do that. Or with your partner. Maybe you are, and this actually also goes with how you say thank you to somebody. So maybe you came in and your partner is cooking dinner. Instead of saying thanks for cooking dinner, that’s really nice. You can say when I walked in the door, I smelled this amazing meal, and I saw you here, and I know how much preparation time that takes, and how and how you had to make time for this, and it really makes the family feel nurtured. That’s a really different way of saying thank you. So there’s some modeling of some different communication skills that you can try again. Pick one, pick how you ask questions, pick how you affirm people, noticing their skills and strengths and values. You can reflect back what they said to you and summarizing. That’s more of an advanced skill, but in a longer conversation, summarizing what they said. I hope that I didn’t confuse you with this, but I just this is so important, and I teach these skills all the time, and I thought I wonder if I wonder if I could bring this into a podcast and just try to give some examples of this, and also gage if you guys want me to to work with you directly on how we can all be better communicators. Because I think, you know, AI is awesome. AI is helping us in lots of ways. There’s also a lot of ways AI is not helping us by removing our ability to do the critical thinking in our own lives, or there’s, like, a lot of AI work slop out there, just like stuff that you can tell that people just threw into an AI generator or AI tool that, like it, just literally spit it out and they copy pasted it on their LinkedIn. And I don’t actually, I can tell when people have done that, and I don’t like reading those things. So I digress, but communication skills and social skills are going to become even more important with AI out there doing some of the intellectual heavy lifting for people. So I highly encourage you to pick one skill to work on today, and I’d love to hear back how it goes for you. Stick with it. Give yourself one or two weeks of doing it, and then notice how your relationships change and how you feel. Notice how people’s face changes whenever you communicate with them in that way. I’m so excited that you are interested in this, that you’re listening, and I hope I can help you. And thank you just to my team at Palm Tree Pod Co. for their dedication and making sure that these podcasts come up, they had to remind me that I have this solo episode that I would have probably forgotten about if it hadn’t been for them. Thank you to you, the listeners. We’ve been doing this podcast for almost nine years. That is unbelievable to think about that I almost can’t comprehend. Like 25% of my life, almost I’ve been doing a podcast like what? So thank you for listening and for keeping me going. And if this is resonating with you, please share it with your friends or with your partner, because the way that we communicate is the glue that keeps our relationships together, and honestly, the glue that I think our world needs better communicators. So with that, I am so glad that you’re here, and I’m with you on this journey of personal growth adventure and our mission to be better every day. We’ll see you right back here next week.