Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

Just saying that, it makes sense that you feel X about Y is one of the most powerful phrases that you can say to another person.

Yeah, it's exactly right.

So they're affirming, they're acknowledging what you said, they're affirming what you said.

They're also checking to make sure they've understood you explicitly.

Linguists call this grounding.

It's making sure that your shared understanding actually is shared and it's accurate.

And if it's not accurate, it gives you the opportunity to repair it, to correct it and say, oh, that's not actually what I meant.

What I meant was this.

And we're constantly doing that checking and repairing process while we talk to other people.

And so speaking, you're listening is so powerful.

Follow-up questions do the same thing.

You can only follow up if you've heard what they said before.

Paraphrasing, if you're in a group and a couple other people have said something, you can say, okay, what I'm hearing here is, I think we as a group feel like we wanna have fun, but we also need to make this hard decision.

Is that right?

So just kind of summarizing what people before you have said is another way of doing it in the sort of group context.

Amazing.

Yeah, this is where real power and authority and influence come from.

When we think of people who are charismatic and competent, this is what they're doing.

They are actually listening.

They're putting in the hard work to listen to other people.