Skills to Support Discussion

Click for information on the following:

• OARS
• Open questions
• Affirming
• Reflecting
• Summarising

OARS

• These skills provide your core tools. Their selective use enables you to build up a partnership with the client and to guide the conversation.
• Learning to listen and provide reflections is crucial and takes practice and reflection on practice.
• Your most common response should be a reflection.
• Good reflections should increase the time spent talking by the client.

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Open questions

• Questions which do not invite one word answers:
  •  “What would you like us to talk about?” 
  • “How did you first start drinking?” 
  •  “What would change in your life if you stopped smoking?” 
  •  “How do you think that ......is related to .....?”

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 Affirming

• Affirmations should be genuine and usually directed at something specific the client has done, or an appreciation of strengths or behaviours.
• “I can see that stopping smoking/making changes is important for you.”

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Reflecting

• Reflective statements restate the client’s comments using language that accurately clarifies and captures the meaning of what the client is saying.
• The inflection at the end of the reflection should be downward, otherwise it will sound like a question.
• Enables the client to amend or confirm what they have said.
• The practitioner can direct the conversation and focus by selectively choosing what to reflect.
• Simple reflections
• Rephrasing
  • Slightly rephrases what has been said
• Complex reflections - paraphrasing/ reframing
  • A more major rephrase, reflecting the meaning in what was said. Adds to and extends what was said.
  • Can be a double-sided reflection if exploring ambivalence. The use of “and” rather than “but” can change resistance.
  • Can amplify a reflection, in which the client is likely to take the opposite view.
• Reflection of feeling
  • This is a deeper reflection which emphasises the emotional dimension of what has been said.

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Summarising

• In summary statements the practitioner selects several pieces of client information and combines them in a summary.
• Can be used to:
  
  • Make a transition to another topic
  • Invite more material
  • Check accuracy
  • Highlight ambivalence
  • Lead into evocative questions and elicit change talk
    
    • “What does this mean to you?” 
    • "How will you deal with this...?”

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