Behavioural Intelligence - Summarising Is Your Best Friend

Behavioural Intelligence means making conscious decisions about your next behaviour and not being ruled by your impulses, instincts or emotional reactions. This is the discipline and skill of the professional influencer or negotiator. If there is a general rule to be followed it is "Slow Down". The slowing down may be almost imperceptible but it's vital if you are to stay in control. Your prefrontal cortex needs about 0.6 seconds to interrupt a gut reaction and help you to decide what is most useful to say or do.

In previous articles on Behavioural Intelligence I've described the behaviours and techniques to use as well as mistakes to avoid. I constantly reinforce that no behaviour is inherently good or bad - it's the context within which it is used and its efficacy in achieving your objectives which defines its value.

However, if there is one behaviour that I value above all others in negotiating, influencing and building relationship it is Summarising. Research shows that the best and most successful influencers and negotiators summarise twice as much as less successful practitioners.

There are a number of reasons and contexts for summarising. These are the three most important: -

Listening - There is no behaviour in the Behavioural Intelligence list called "listening". The simple definition of a behaviour is something you say or do. So for people to know you are listening you have to say something or do something rather than sit in silence. The most powerful sign to others that you are actively listening is when you summarise back to them what you've heard and understood. Negotiators that use summarising in this way have higher trust, openness and engagement scores. Even when they ultimately disagree, people report that they were fair in their disagreement because they had listened.

Interrupting - "Shutting Out" is often necessary when the other person is talkative and not listening to you or others in the meeting. The problem is if you do interrupt them with your thinking they are likely to resent the interruption - and not listen. If, however, you interrupt by summarising what they are saying you will have a moment where their attention is captured and you can regain control. You must use a few of their exact words to interrupt their thought process, for example "So when you say you're bitterly disappointed Jane ..."

Now What? - The best influencers and negotiators all face moments when they don't know what to do next. Summarising gives them the opportunity to pass the information through their own brains once again with the added bonus of verifying what has been said to avoid misunderstandings. So if you're thinking "now what?", summarising gives you the thinking space and allows your prefrontal cortex to perform its management role.

The paradox of slowing things down by Summarising is you'll appear to be the kind of person who "thinks on their feet" - a trait usually associated with quick thinking not slowness. Notice, however, that it's "quick thinking" not just "quick reacting".