Last weekend I attended a training for essential consulting skills. One obvious idea presented there really impressed me: Listen to your conversational partner! Sounds trivial, right? Well, there are some simple techniques about that worth to be mentioned.

The workshop leader asked one consultant to talk about his hobbies. When the conversation started, the workshop leader was not attending the conversation and just saying “Hm, yeah, interesting…” while sorting some papers on the table. Of course, the consultant felt very uncomfortable in this situation. He was unsure about himself and just nervous. Then the workshop leader used some simple tricks to keep the conversation running. Attend: Just be present, concentrate on your partner and do not do any other things. Clarify: Ask, if any detail is unclear, show your interest. Restate: Repeat with your own words to show you got the point. Empathize: Be a mirror for your partners feelings. Summarize: Give a résumé about the dialog to be sure you got the key points and to derive the next steps from this conversation.

Use these techniques to give the attention your counterpart deserves and see how much more information you can get and how much more comfortable your conversational partner feels. Not everybody likes to talk to unknown persons. People are not sure about themselves, they don’t know that the other person wants to hear and what will be done with the given information. As consultant you have to deal with such situations every day. So use these simple techniques to get what you want, to make others feel comfortable and to build up a trustful relationship with your customer.

Are you a good listener? Which techniques do you use to keep a conversation running?