 How can we get beyond the surface and promote a deeper conversation? That's the topic of today's podcast where I'll be exploring five of my favorite phrases for deepening the conversation. Let's dive straight in. So today we're going to be thinking about how to have some deeper, more meaningful conversations. And one of my favorite hacks for this is just thinking about the way in which we respond to somebody who is speaking to us. So perhaps that conversation has kind of started or we feel that we're in a good safe space to have a bit of a deeper conversation with someone that might be a child or it might be an adult. But we're not quite sure how to encourage and enable that conversation. One of the things that can go wrong here for many of us much of the time is that our human instinct to kind of volley the conversation back and forth, back and forth and make it quite evenly distributed can get in the way. What we really want to do when we want that conversation to go deeper and we want the person that we're listening to listening to is an important phrase. We're not talking to them. We're listening to them to go a bit deeper to explore their story, to expand on things. We need to have a think about some prompts that means that they are doing more of the talking and we are doing more of the listening. So prompt number one is tell me more. So when somebody is talking to you about something, they've begun to make a bit of a disclosure to chat with you a little about something that's on their mind or something that's happened to them or a way in which they're feeling. Rather than responding and taking your turn in the conversation and perhaps sharing your experience, instead we invite them to go a little bit deeper. We use a phrase like tell me more. Sometimes I will simply say say more. This is one of the things I'll often say if I'm running a training session and somebody has made a suggestion or shared an idea or an experience following a moment of discussion. Often they'll share a tiny snippet and I'll be intrigued and want to know a little bit more about this and want the people in the room to gain a bit more from their experience. So I will simply say say more and that's all the prompt that someone needs sometimes. It's that invitation that says I'm listening. Actually, I do want to know a bit more about this and that's important to know. Sometimes the person you're listening to doesn't yet know how ready you are to listen. They're still kind of gauging the conversation, mapping out the space. Is this safe? Is it the right time? And by prompting them specifically to carry on, to say more, to tell me more. I'd like to know a bit more about that or whatever exact phrase feels good for you. Tell me more works well. Then that tells them, yes, this is the time. This is the place they do want to know more about this. I'm not boring them. I'm not taking this too far. This is okay. So tell me more is number one and probably the one I use the most of all. Number two, I kind of hesitate to use this and always want to write it out of any of these kinds of suggestions because it's so so corny. But how did that feel or how did that make you feel? It's so cheesy and it's like such a complete trope about all therapists and counselors everywhere. But there is a reason for that. It's a really, really helpful question when somebody tells you about something that happened to them or something they did or whatever. Asking how did that make you feel is actually a really great prompt to get them to think a bit more about it to help you to step into their shoes. And it can sometimes give you some really surprising answers. Because in particular, if somebody has overcome a challenge, for example, they've done something, you know, where they had to feel the fear and do it anyway or something like that. How did that make you feel is an important question because sometimes we might expect an answer of proud and the answer might be terrified or actually it wasn't as bad as I thought or what have you. There's all sorts of different ways that someone might be feeling. And the thing that we always have to remember is we're not mind readers. We might know the person that we're listening to quite well. But sometimes that can actually get in the way because we think we know how they feel and often we just don't. And the only way to really know is to ask them. And sometimes even they don't know how they feel or they didn't know because they haven't connected with this question and your prompt can mean that they take stock for a moment and go, Oh, actually, how did I feel about that? I'm not quite sure. And then they might begin to explore it. So how did that make you feel as cheesy as it sounds is actually a fantastic question for deepening conversations. Another really helpful prompt to explore things from different points of view can be to encourage them to step into the shoes of somebody who really cares about them and ask them. What do you think your friend or your parent, for example, would think about this situation and asking them to look at it through the lens of somebody who's kind and compassionate to them. The reason to do this is because we're not always very kind and compassionate about ourselves. And so if you're listening to someone who's kind of beating themselves up, doing themselves down, clearly not very proud of the things that they've done and just giving themselves generally a really hard time. So try and flip the lens and say, well, what do you think a friend would think in this situation? What do you think a friend would feel about this? What would your mum say about this? Or similar can help us just to begin to explore the situation through perhaps a slightly more positive lens. And they might be dismissive of the other person's point of view and they might say, Oh, but they're always really nice to me. Or yes, they think this, but I don't agree. But again, that gives us something we can begin to pick apart. And actually, if we see that there's real dissonance between how they feel, how they respond, their take on things and the take that someone who's kind and compassionate towards them would have, that in itself is a really interesting dichotomy that we might begin to want to actually pick apart. Number four kind of riffs on that a little bit and it explores what advice we would give a friend in a similar situation. So if somebody find themselves a little bit uncertain what to do next or how to approach and handle a certain situation, sometimes again, flipping that lens instead of thinking, what can I do for myself thinking? What would I advise for a friend can be a really helpful way to get out of a bit of a rut in the conversation in the thinking. What we'll often find is that people are a lot more creative and can come up with better problem solving ideas when they're looking at this on behalf of someone else. Often as well, they'll have more confidence in the capacity of a friend or someone they care about to get themselves out of a situation. So they might think a little bit more widely and they may also, if they've got any kind of self esteem type issues or negative narratives going on, they might feel that a friend or someone they're more compassionate towards actually deserves to find a way out of this situation. And so their thinking can be opened up that way. I sometimes will also flip this conversation directly around and just say, what would you advise me if I came to you with this problem? I particularly use this technique when I'm talking to my daughters who are 13 about friendship issues. Actually, I'm not very good at dealing with friendship issues. I'm good at listening to them. I'm good at helping my daughters to explore what to do next. But I don't have lots of really good experience or ideas to draw on here if I'm absolutely honest about it. Whereas my daughters actually have got a lot more experience and often come up with really good ideas. So I will go to them sometimes if I'm having any kind of friendship issues for their ideas. And so if I find that they're talking to me, they're looking for advice, they're sharing what's going on with their friends, I will just flip the conversation on its head and say, OK, so if I came to you with this problem, what would you be advising me? And sometimes then there can be a bit of a challenge in the conversation because they're then not prepared to take their own advice. But again, that gives us something to explore and a starting point as to what might be our next steps. The final prompt number five is what do you wish had happened differently? So sometimes when we look back at a situation, particularly if it's one that we're beating ourselves up about, if it's something where things didn't go quite as we might have hoped, then the question, what do you wish had happened differently? Or what could happen differently next time can be a great way to begin to explore and expand on what's happened. Maybe thinking about what did go OK. We can also, you know, lengthen this out by saying, and what would you keep the same? What went well? What were you proud of? Those sorts of questions. But what do you wish had happened differently can help us to look back through that lens of recognising where the challenge and the problems might have been, but also thinking what could happen differently another time. So you might explore this for one of two different reasons. One might be just really trying to pick apart the situation to really understand it from the point of view of the person you're listening to, really trying to get what was it about the situation where perhaps things didn't go quite to plan that didn't feel OK, what could be different next time. But we can also use this question from a proactive problem solving point of view, because what you wish would have happened differently this time is something that we can try and enable to happen differently next time. I hope there are some ideas in here that you can pick up and take into your own conversations just to take them a little more deeply. And just remember entering those conversations with the mindset of listener rather than active talking participant is one of the things that will make a big difference as well. If you found the content that I've shared today helpful, then please like, subscribe and share. If you would like to support my work more generally, you can do so in a number of ways. The first one is just simply to share it the wider reach that my work has the happier my heart is. So please do go and use it and share it. The second is that you can join me over on Patreon, where for a pound a month or just over 10 pounds a year, you can support my work in a small but growing community of people there who get to see everything a little bit earlier than everyone else and get to help contribute to my plans about what I'm going to create next. And then finally you can take the nuclear option of booking me to come and speak at your next event or in your setting or to do so virtually online. 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