Management Skills: Mirroring

Teach learners the skill of mirroring and active listening and see them use it competently in training role-plays. Discuss broader application of this skill in the larger working world.

To meet this goal, learners need:

• Buy in (to understand why mirroring is beneficial ). This can include accessing learners' prior schema for when mirroring has been helpful for them in the past.

• Awareness of places where they might be resistant to receiving feedback (helpful to create an inclusive culture, reminders that we all learn at a different pace, buy-in around the idea that we're not trying to do it perfectly).

Practice Activities:

• Modeled demonstration of what mirroring is/isn't from facilitators with time for trainees to debrief with facilitator/as a group.

• Short practice within triads (coach, client, witness) with feedback from facilitators.

Knowledge/Information awareness:

• To be aware of what mirroring is, and what it isn't, so that trainees can self-correct or offer peers accurate feedback.

• Mirroring is often confused with trying to repeat exactly what someone says, when in fact, it's much looser and involves more paraphrasing, and more picking up on significant client words/phrases.

The training was delivered to 53 coaches in training.

Two facilitators intentionally mirror one another "badly," literally repeating everything the other person says.

Debrief with learners highlighting why repeating everything exactly isn't effective . Then facilitators mirror in front of the group again, this time mirroring effectively.

Debrief: "What did you notice/what was the coach in this demo picking up on from the client?" From there, trainees move to triad practice (with facilitator input), keeping sessions short (5-10 minutes) and debrief afterwards to determine how the mirroring provided opportunities for active listening.

Facilitators also take time to let trainees air what was challenging, so that questions can be asked, camaraderie around learning is established, and facilitators can be aware of places where further practice might be needed. Later, mirroring will be referenced in relationship to other coaching skills.

We know that a learner is gaining skills with mirroring and active listening when they are aware of the places where they want to capture more of what a person is saying, but instead of trying to chase the futile effort of "remembering it all exactly," they start picking up on repetitive words or phrases and honing in on just a few of those.

Example: An employee says, "I wish that I had had more time to work on the last project," and the learner who is in the management role to practice mirroring might say (at first), something like, "So there's the desire to have had more time to work on the last project."

As a learner’s skill develops, mirroring will get looser and will also incorporate asking additional questions.

Example: An employee says, "I wish that I had had more time on that project," and the manager practicing mirroring will say something like, "I hear that desire to have had more time—it was a stressful deadline. I wonder what you feel might be different about how that project turned out, if there had been more time?"

Additional work: metacognitive reflection in which the learner reflects on and can articulate their process around listening, including somatic cues they felt within themselves, intuitive hits, strategic ideas.

The learner's ability to be simultaneously aware of their own process, and the client's process, all while listening, indicate mastery of this skill.