Four Phrases to Cull From Consultative Conversations

Effective communication is the most important tool in a consultant’s repertoire.

Often brought into a project or team environment to facilitate constructive conversations, the consultant is always required to choose their words carefully.

For in any meeting or workshop or presentation, there are moments when differing factions hover over common ground.

Equally, opposing viewpoints, when expressed, can create damaging rifts and it is often the role of the consultant to bridge these gaps and cement the common ground while it exists!

Every consultant knows that a careless phrase can damage sensitive negotiations. In our experience, four phrases that should never crop up in consultative conversations are:

1. “Look” / “Listen”

Directing people in this off-hand way is becoming more and more common. Regularly used by politicians to answer unpleasant questions from journalists, these sentence-starters are creeping into everyday discussions.

The words “look” and “listen”, often chosen to emphasise a viewpoint, are aggressive turns of phrase and can be viewed by your audience as abrupt and commanding.

By beginning a sentence in this manner, the consultant seems to be saying: You’re not hearing me or You need to look at things the way I do.

Both inferences are far from engaging and can alienate your audience well before you have made your point.

2. “The thing is…”

This is what we call conversation clutter.

It is another term for “patter” or “verbal fillers”, where the person who has the limelight fills up the spaces in their conversation with meaningless words.

Have you ever been involved in a conversation that the other person insists on controlling with long pauses, drawn-out words or big physical gestures? They are likely to also be guilty of conversation clutter.

The reality is that phrases like “If you ask me…” or “When you stop for a moment and think about it…” are not only largely meaningless, but are also designed to give the audience the impression that the speaker already has all of the answers.

Not a good way to encourage people to contribute to a conversation!

3. “We don’t have time for this…”

The carpark is a consulting technique used when many, potentially distracting issues arise in a consultative environment. While these issues are often important, they may be either out of scope of the current discussion or impossible to resolve effectively in the given timeframe.

As a result, the consultant need to “park” these issues without devaluing them and often writes them on an adjacent white-board to keep them in sight, but out of scope.

This is a far more effective way of managing the conversation than throwing your hands into the air and declaring, “We don’t have time for this!”

Just remember that by telling your audience you will address an issue at a later date, you must honour your commitment or risk losing their trust in both you and the process.

4. “Obviously!” “Surely!”

Like the first phrase, this one is often lobbed into a conversation like a grenade.

The speaker not only suggests that they have all of the answers, but in a single word can ridicule all contrasting opinions.

When dealing with other people, nothing is obvious or certain.

If the consultant wants to be clear about a particular point, it is far better that they phrase it in a less aggressive manner, acknowledging that the general consensus might be different from individual opinions.

In using the words “I think” or “I believe” you open the floor to other ideas, rather than suggesting that only the dim-witted or obstinate would dare to disagree with you!

Tags: consulting, language, negotiation
Posted in Communication. Permalink for this post: permalink. If you are a Digg user, please  Digg this post. |  Stumble It

What do you think?

Leave a comment! Or send a trackback from your own blog.

RSS