The skills you need guide to interpersonal skills

INTENSITY
EMOTION
YOU FEEL
A LITTLE BIT
SAD/ANGRY?
QUITE
HELPLESS/DEPRESSED?
VERY
STRESSED?
EXTREMELY
EMBARRASSED?

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14
2.
ADVANCED COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Reflecting needs to combine content and feeling to truly reflect the meaning 
of what the speaker has said. For example:
Speaker: 
“I just don’t understand my boss. One minute he says one thing 
and the next minute he says the opposite.”
Listener:
“You feel very confused by him?”
Reflecting meaning allows the listener to reflect the speaker’s experiences 
and emotional response to those experiences. It links the content and feeling 
components of what the speaker has said.
GUIDELINES FOR REFLECTING
• Be natural.
• Listen for the basic message. Consider the content, 
feeling and meaning expressed by the speaker.
• Restate what you have been told in simple terms.
• When restating, look for non- verbal as well as verbal cues 
that confirm or deny the accuracy of your paraphrasing. 
(Note that some speakers may pretend you have got it right because 
they feel unable to assert themselves and disagree with you.)
• Do not question the speaker unnecessarily.
• Do not add to the speaker’s meaning.
• Do not take the speaker’s topic in a new direction.
• Always be non-directive and non- udgemental.

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15
2.
ADVANCED COMMUNICATION SKILLS
QUESTIONING
Questions are widely used both to clarify situations, and more broadly 
in communication.
QUESTIONING FOR CLARIFICATION
When you are the listener in a sensitive environment, the right sort of non-directive 
questioning can enable the speaker to describe their viewpoint more fully.
Asking the right question at the right time can be crucial and comes with practice. 
The best questions are open-ended as they give the speaker choice in how to 
respond, whereas closed questions allow only very limited responses.
Some examples of non-directive clarification-seeking questions are:
“I’m not quite sure I understand what you are saying.” 
“I don’t feel clear about the main issue here.”
“When you said ... what did you mean?”
“Could you repeat ?”
BROADER USES OF QUESTIONING
Gathering information is a basic human activity—we use information to learn, to 
help us solve problems, to aid our decision-making processes and to understand 
each other more clearly.
Questioning is the key to gaining more information and without it interpersonal 
communications can fail. Questioning is fundamental to successful communication. 
We all ask and are asked questions when engaged in conversation.
We find questions and answers fascinating and entertaining. Politicians, 
reporters, celebrities and entrepreneurs are often successful based on their 
questioning skills—asking the right questions at the right time and also 
answering (or not) appropriately.
Although questions are usually verbal in nature, they can also be non-verbal. 
Raising of the eyebrows could, for example, be asking, 
“Are you sure?”
, and 
facial expressions can ask all sorts of subtle questions at different times and in 
different contexts.

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16
2.
ADVANCED COMMUNICATION SKILLS
WHY ASK QUESTIONS?
Although the following list is not exhaustive it outlines the main reasons questions 
are asked in common situations.
•